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THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 

THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY 
NEW YORK 

THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON 

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAI8HA 

TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SBNDAI 

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY 
SHANGHAI 



THE BOOK OF 
LAKE GENEVA 



By 
PAUL B. JENKINS 




Published/or 

THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

By 

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 
CHICAGO ILLINOIS 



F^rg 



T 



Copyright 1922, by 
Chicago Historical Society 



Composed and Printed By 

The University of Chicago Pre 

Chicaso, Illinois, U.S.A. 



JAN-2?3 



2 



DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY BELOVED FATHER 

HERMON DUTILH JENKINS, D.D. 

A SOLDIER OF THE REPUBLIC 

LOVER OF NATURE 

MINISTER OF THE GOSPEL 

AND AMONG THE FIRST TO APPRECIATE 

THE BEAUTY AND THE MESSAGE 

OF LAKE GENEVA 



"Nothing is more inspiring than a lake, 
and no environment has more character." 
— Professor A. S. Pearse 

University of Wisconsin 



FOREWORD 

Labor Amoris 

In the hospital area of Beau Desert, in the Depart- 
ment of the Gironde, in October, 1918, the writer stopped 
beside a bed in one of the wards of United States Base 
Hospital 22, and said to a wounded soldier just from the 
Argonne: "Buddy, can you think of anything you would 
particularly like to have, right now ?" 

The boy looked up and grinned. "You bet I can," 
he said. "I've been thinking of it ever since I got to this 
country. I'm going to have it again, too — but I'll have 
to wait a while for it, now." 

"Let's hear what it is," we said. "We'll see how near 
we can come to it, anyway." 

"There's nothing here anywhere near it," he answered. 
"I want one good look at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin — if 
you happen to know where that is." 

"You're right," we said. "There's nothing over here 
that is anywhere like it. But, son, we saw that Lake 
twenty years before you were born, and have been going 
there ever since. It won't be long after we land in the 
U.S.A. before we, too, are there for one more good look at 
it. But if we have to wait a while before we can see it 
again, we can talk about it, anyway." And by that 
bedside in France — patients, nurses, doctors, and the 
dingy surroundings of the rude barrack ward all forgotten 
— two lovers of Lake Geneva exchanged tales of days 
beside its waters and of how each planned to spend as 
much as possible of the rest of life amid its scenes. 

[ix] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Thus do particular aspects of nature lay hold upon 
human hearts, until more than any other they satisfy the 
eye and rule the memory and guide the thought through- 
out life itself. Perhaps almost any phase of Nature may 
thus appeal. To some it is the ocean, to some the moun- 
tains, to some the plains. Usually, however, there is a 
bit of water in the dear, the remembered view. Many a 
less-gifted soul has felt, with Stevenson, that beside some 
shore his "heart went down with the anchor chain," 
and was ever thereafter a willing prisoner of some "isle 
of Vivien." 

Nearly fifty years ago a minister from a little town in 
northern Illinois took his family for a month's camping- 
out beside Lake Geneva. Its surroundings were then 
largely as wild and untenanted as are many of the lakes 
of northern Wisconsin today. The outing was repeated 
the next year, and the next, until in after-years the father 
said: "For nearly twenty years my children lived for 
eleven months of each year in memories of their last vaca- 
tion on Lake Geneva, or in anticipations of their next!" 

The writer was one of those fortunate children, and 
ever since has spent as much time beside the Lake as the 
tasks and travels of a busy life have permitted. He has 
seen the old Indian trails about its shores become the paths 
annually traversed by thousands of visitors. He has 
roamed its surface on the ice of winter and crossed it by 
every form of craft in summer. He has fished and hunted 
its bays and marshes, has walked its bottom in a diving- 
helmet, and has scanned it from soaring airplanes high 
above. From the nearer cities of the Middle West he 
has driven, bicycled, or motored to it, by almost every 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

road, times without number. The world over, he has 
met kindred souls to whom its unique features of blue 
waters of an unrivaled clearness amid their high green 
hills, a combination unknown to any other midwestern 
lake, have given it a charm and a fascination unfor- 
gotten, and resought whenever life has allowed. It has 
come to have for him a beauty, a character, and an influ- 
ence such as no other scenes, from mid-Atlantic to the 
heart of the Rockies, have manifested. He has long hoped 
to put in words, for the pleasure and profit of others, its 
message to its lovers. The welcome opportunity having at 
last arisen, the following pages embody that labor of love. 
For assistance in the form of suggestions and infor- 
mation, the writer is indebted to more friends, acquaint- 
ances, and "oldest inhabitants" of the Lake country than 
could possibly be enumerated here. To Director Edwin B. 
Frost of the Yerkes Observatory; to Dr. O. L. Schmidt, ex- 
president of the Illinois State Historical Society; and to 
Mr. Wingfield Watson,^ the venerable survivor of the 
Strang colony of the forties, especial thanks are due for 
their suggestions, information, gifts of books, and loans of 
valuable documents. Except where otherwise indicated, 
the photographs are by Mr. George C. Blakslee, staff 
photographer of the Yerkes Observatory. May the many 
who have courteously assisted find something of their 
own appreciation as part of the message of Lake Geneva. 

Paul B. Jenkins 

Williams Bay, Wisconsin 
October 1922 

' Since the foregoing words were written, Mr. Watson passed away, on Sunday^ 
October 29, 1922, in the ninety-fifth year of his life. 

[xi] 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. The ^uartemary Geology of Southeastern Wisconsin. Depart- 
ment of the Interior, U.S. Geol. Survey. William C. 
Alden. 191 8. 
II. The Delavan Lobe of the Lake Michigan Glacier. Department 
of the Interior, U.S. Geol. Survey. William C. Alden. 
1904. 

III. Geology. Chamberlain and Salisbury. Vol. Ill, 1906. 

IV. Prehistoric America. S. D. Peet. Vol. II. 1890. 

V. Wisconsin Geological and Historical Survey Bulletin No. VIII ^ 
2d edition, "The Lakes of Southeastern Wisconsin." Nevin 
Melancthon Fenneman, Ph.D., professor of geology, Uni- 
versity of Cincinnati. 1910. 
VI. The Distribution and Food of the Fishes of Three Wisconsin 
Lakes in Summer. A. S. Pearse, professor of zoology. 
University of Wisconsin. "University of Wisconsin Studies 
in Science," No. 3. 1921. 
VII. Field Museum of Natural History Zoological Studies. Field 

Museum, Chicago. Vol. XI. 
VIII. Wisconsin Historical Collections; Wisconsin State Historical 
Society. Vols. I-XX. 
IX. Wisconsin in Three Centuries. Reuben G. Thwaites and 

others. Vols. I-IV. 1906. 
X. Wau Bun, the Early Day in the Northwest. Mrs. John H. 

Kinzie. 2d edition, illustrated. 1857. 
XI. Chicago and the Old Northwest. Milo M. Quaife. 1913. 
XII. Leading Events of Wisconsin History . Henry E. Legler. 1898. 

XIII. Annals of Lake Geneva. James Simmons. 1897. 

XIV. Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. I, No. 2, December, 

1 91 7. "Early Recollections of Lake Geneva." George 
Manierre. (In same number, notes on the Potawattomie 
Indians.) 
XV. The Delavan Republican, Delavan, Wisconsin. Issues of 
January and February, 1906. 

[xiii] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

XVI. Plat Book of Walworth County, Wisconsin. W. W. Hixson & 

Co., Rockford, Illinois. 1922. 
1^11. Our Country Home. Mrs. Frances Kinsley Hutchinson. 1907. 
XVIII. The Social Anatomy of a Rural Community. C. J. Galpin. 
University of Wisconsin Research Bulletin No. 34. 
XIX. The Country Church an Economic and Social Force. C. J. 
Galpin. University of Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment 
Station, Bulletin No. 278. 1917. 
XX. The Yerkes Observatory. Edwin B. Frost. University of 
Chicago Press. 1922. 



[xiv] 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

List of Illustrations xvii 

CHAPTER 

I. The Glacial Origin and the Water Supply of 

Lake Geneva I 

n. The Indians of Lake Geneva ii 

III. The Coming of the White Man 49 

IV. Vegetation of the Lake Geneva Country • • • 75 
V. The Fish of Lake Geneva 93 

VI. Animals and Birds of Lake Geneva loi 

VII. The Yerkes Observatory 121 

VIII. Motor Routes to Lake Geneva 135 

IX. Walworth County 145 

X. Institutions and Homes of Lake Geneva .... 175 

XL Around the Year on Lake Geneva 197 

Index 219 



[xv] 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

The Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago . iii 

Upper Molar Tooth of Mastodon Americanus .... 4 

Pottawatomie Indian Remains from Williams Bay . . 32*^ 

Indian Arrowheads from the North Shore of Lake 

Geneva 38 

The West End of Lake Geneva as It Appeared in 1831 58 

Garden Vista, Estate of E. G. Uihlein 90 

The Yerkes Observatory from the Northeast . . . 122 

"Rainbow Bay," on the Southwest Shore 140 

James Jesse Strang 152 

Flyleaf of the "Book of the Law of the Lord" . . . 156 

A Walworth County Cornfield in October . . . . 166 

Residence of Albert W. Harris 186 

Old Indian Trail, Now the "Lake Shore Path" . . . 190 

Looking East from "The Hilltop," Grounds of the Young 

Men's Christian Association College 210 

Map of Lake Geneva 218 



[xvii] 



<l 



ii 



CHAPTER I 

THE GLACIAL ORIGIN AND THE WATER SUPPLY 
OF LAKE GENEVA 

Glacial Origin 

In that far, prehistoric time in the history of the earth 
when the southward extension of the polar ice cap covered 
much of the present continent of North America, certain 
of the forward-moving southern edges of its glaciers played 
the chief part in molding and determining the subsequent 
and present-day topography, the contours, hills, valleys, 
and lakes, of southeastern Wisconsin. 

There are believed to have been several such invasions 
of the present territory of the state, as of the rest of the 
northern portion of the continent, of which, however, 
the last two chiefly affected the Lake Geneva neighbor- 
hood. 

The first of these southward-moving glacier extensions 
of the great northern ice sheet had much to do with the 
formation of the bed of Lake Michigan. At the same time 
a western branch of the moving ice dug the trough in 
which today lie Green Bay and Lake Winnebago, and 
which extended southwestward, a shallower portion of 
this trough forming the bed of the broad, somewhat 
depressed area extending from the town of Lyons to 
Delavan, thus forming what our geologists call (from the 
names of several of its modern settlements) the ancient 
"Troy Valley." From the melting of this particular 
glacial branch or "lobe," the torrents of its icy waters 
escaped through the then connected Lake Como-Lake 

[I] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

bed itself from being filled in a way that would have left 
it far shallower than it has ever since remained. 

On the final recession of the glacial ice/ it is probable — 
perhaps certain — that the Lake Geneva neighborhood 
and the forests that sprang up about it were tenanted 
by many of those remarkable forms of long-extinct 
animal life which our geologists tell us were characteristic 
of this, the latter stage of the "Pleistocene" or post- 
glacial period. Among the more abundant of these in 
this latitude were two or three species of buffalo, a 
gigantic elk, several early forms of the horse, and the 
mastodon and mammoth. 

The mastodon, an early and immense type of the 
elephant family, deserves the attention of those interested 
in Lake Geneva, as it is known to have inhabited the 
surrounding country subsequent to the last glacial period. 
The great bones and immense teeth have been dug up 
at several points in the neighborhood, notably on the low 
slopes and gravel beds bordering the northwest curve of 
Williams Bay. In 1907 Mr. Michael Johnson, then 
living where the Holmquist residence now stands on 
Congress Street in the village of Williams Bay, dug up 
in his garden a quantity of the remains of one of these 
great creatures of the long ago. Many bones, ribs and 
others, were found, most of which speedily crumbled on 
exposure to the air. The huge molar teeth, however, 
with their characteristic thick, enamel-covered cusps, 

' The date of the recession of the last glacial invasion is variously estimated as 
from twenty thousand to sixty thousand years ago. Recent geological opinion inclines 
toward the shorter rather than the longer estimate. See Chamberlain and Salisbury, 
Geology, III, 413-20. As the Lake Geneva region was at the southernmost edge of the 
ice advance, it would be among the first to be uncovered. 

[4] 





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THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

have resisted such decay, and several have been preserved 
and are in the possession of the finder's children. These 
great creatures were widely distributed over the globe 
in the Pleistocene period, and were the ancestors of the 
later true elephant of Asia. Like the elephant, they had 
long tusks projecting from the upper jaw. Whole beds 
of these tusks, transformed into "fossil ivory," have been 
found in places in Alaska and Siberia, and they were not 
unknown to the Indians, who always marveled mightily 
at the occasional discovery of such remains. The tusks 
of the Williams Bay mastodon may have been similarly 
unearthed by the local Indians of previous centuries, 
as a careful search of the locality revealed no trace of 
them. Of these animals, their period and their extent, 
geologists tell us: 

The proboscidians dominated the fields and forests. The Elephas 
survived the glacial period in America, and its tusks and skeletons 
are not infrequently found in beds of peat and muck that have ac- 
cumulated in the shallow basins on the surface of the late Wisconsin 
drift, indicating its presence there after the ice had left the country 
finally. 

The mastodon ranged widely over the Northern States and 
into Canada, as well as southward into the Southern States. Not 
improbably its range was also shifted with the glacial movements; 
but as it emigrated to South America and crossed the tropics, it 
cannot have been ill-adapted to a warm climate. Williston is au- 
thority for the suggestive fact that the mastodon was almost exclu- 
sively confined to the valleys and timbered regions, notably those of 
.... the Mississippi Valley.^ 

The somewhat later form of the prehistoric elephant, 
the mammoth, ranged over the same area in perhaps 

' Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, III, 496-97. 

[5] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

equal numbers, including the gigantic species known as 
the Imperial Mammoth, which stood thirteen feet high 
at the shoulder. 

The Water Supply of Lake Geneva 

It is probable that ever since the glacial period the 
water supply of Lake Geneva has been derived, as today, 
partly from many springs, which discharge immediately 
into the Lake, and partly from numerous small streams 
which deliver the water of other springs a short distance 
away. The village of Fontana was well named, more 
than half a century ago, from its abounding springs. 
One small group, issuing within a radius of a few feet, 
long furnished fifteen horse-power to an old mill, still 
standing, a few rods distant. These and many other 
springs at Fontana unite their waters into the clear, cold 
stream which enters the Lake at its western end. 

At certain places lines of springs issue from the base 
of bluffs at a considerable elevation above the Lake. 
On the north side of the lowland at Fontana and the west 
side of the lowland north of Williams Bay, such lines of 
springs or seepage lie from 30 to 40 feet above the 
Lake. In each case the result has been the accumulation 
of peat on a slope below the seepage line. The peat bed 
west of the main road from Williams Bay to Elkhorn, 
for a distance of three-fourths of a mile north of Williams 
Bay, is a particularly perfect specimen of this kind, having 
a gently sloping top, a steep front, and a perfectly definite 
upper boundary at the foot of a steep, wooded bluff. 

The outlet of Lake Geneva is to the northeast, through 
the White River, a stream of considerable size and 

[6] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

eroding power. If allowed to work uncurbed, this stream 
would steadily cut down its channel and lower the level 
of the Lake. Up to the year 1836 the stream had indeed 
succeeded in cutting down to a point 6 or 7 feet below 
the present lake-level. At that date the dam was put in, 
which has ever since kept the water at its present height. 
As a result, the Lake is today one-eleventh larger in total 
area than it was before the dam was built. Seasonal varia- 
tions have shown an extreme range in the lake-level of 
a little more than 2 feet. 

The Lake has left no record of a level higher than its 
present high-water mark, hence the amount of cutting 
which the outlet effected prior to 1836 cannot be definitely 
known to be greater than the 6 or 7 feet mentioned, which 
the dam has replaced. Here, as in other similar cases, 
the dam was built by merely refilling the notch which 
the stream had cut. As viewed from the railroad bridge 
east of the dam, the narrow valley cut by the outlet is 
very plain. The stream here meanders between bluffs 
about 120 yards apart. 

In lakes of the type to which Geneva belongs, there is, 
of course, some continuous wearing of the steeper bluffs 
whose bases are washed by the waters. From the data 
given us in the original survey of the Lake in 1835, ^^ 
know that certain such cUffs have receded fully 16 feet 
in the nearly ninety subsequent years. 

Lake Como, 2 miles north of Geneva for most of its 
length, occupies a shallow basin in a longitudinal trough 
in the Elkhorn moraine. Delavan Lake, 2,'S miles to the 
westward, lies in a valley somewhat similar to Geneva, 
which has, however, been much more filled up in the 

[7] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

course of time, with the result that it is much the shallower 
of the two. 

As a result of the outlined geological history, Lake 
Geneva is third in area of the sixty-odd lakes of south- 
eastern Wisconsin, being surpassed in size only by Green 
and Mendota lakes. It is second in depth. Green Lake 
alone being deeper. It is equaled by none in the clearness 
of its waters, as definitely proved by elaborate scientific 
tests and comparisons. Its unique environment of high 
and wooded hills is such as can be found around no other 
western lake, and makes it resemble the famous scenic 
lakes of the Adirondacks and the White Mountains. 
In his studies of the lakes of the North American continent, 
Professor N. M. Fenneman writes of it: 

Lake Geneva has a character which is particularly its own. It 
has an almost complete rim of high wooded slopes with a notable ab- 
sence of swamps on its borders. Its waters are clear, deep, and cold. 
It is large enough to allow of vigorous waves, which show Nature's 
power as well as her beauty. It is the most widely known summer 
resort in Wisconsin, the result of its natural beauty. 

Geneva is 7.5 miles long "as the crow flies," or 7.7 
along its slightly bending axis. It is 2 miles wide at its 
widest point, from Williams Bay to the southern shore. 
It is 142 feet deep at its deepest point, between Con- 
ference Point and the south shore directly opposite. Its 
area is 8.6 square miles, or 5,504 acres. Its level is 282 
feet above Lake Michigan. 

The mentioned unsurpassed clearness of the waters 
of Geneva was recognized by its Indian residents, fisher- 
men, and navigators long before the advent of the white 
man. In the Pottawatomie tongue its very name was 

[8] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



" Kishwauketoe," or "Clear Water," by which it was 
known to the tribes of the Middle West. 

Like all deep-water lakes, the water of Lake Geneva 
becomes stratified in temperature, and to some extent in 
chemical composition, during the summer. In mid- 
summer, the water to a depth of 2S ^^^^ ^^Y ^^^^ ^ tem- 
perature of 75 degrees. At 65 feet it will be about 50 
degrees, and at the same time at the bottom of the deeper 
places it may be as low as 45 degrees Fahrenheit. The 
lower, cooler water does not circulate during midsummer, 
being cut off from contact with the air by the warm 
stratum above. As the season progresses the oxygen in 
the lower strata of water is gradually used by the respira- 
tion of aquatic animals and the decomposition of organic 
products, until below 75 feet the water may contain little 
or no oxygen. This compels the fish to feed at other levels, 
and the ever abundant stores of food on the bottom will 
not be available until late in the fall, about the first of 
November, when the upper water of the Lake cools to 
the same temperature as its depths. Then the water 
circulates, or "turns over," as it has been called, and 
oxygen is again found at all depths, which are again 
equally accessible by its fishes.^ 

Even a brief comment on the geological history and 
features of the Lake Geneva region would be incomplete 
without mention of the remarkable fact that of the 
seventeen actual diamonds which at one time and another 
have been found in the glacial drift of the whole Great 
Lakes region, three have been found at no great distance 

' Passages in the foregoing paragraphs are quoted from professors N. M. Fenneman 
and A. S. Birge. See Bibliography. 

[9] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

from Lake Geneva itself. The United States Geological 
Survey's notable monograph on The Delavan Lobe of the 
Lake Michigan Glacier draws to its close with these inter- 
esting words: 

Foreign elements of great interest as well as of rare occurence are 
the diamonds which have been found at several places in southeastern 
Wisconsin. Three of these stones were found within the area under 
discussion. The first (fifteen carats) was found in or near the village 
of Eagle, in southwestern Waukesha County, in 1876; another (three 
carats) two and one-half miles southwest of Oregon, in Dane County, 
in 1893; the third (two carats) near Burlington. Professor William H. 
Hobbs gives a probable source of derivation of these stones, east of 
James Bay, in Canada. He states that of the mentioned seventeen 
diamonds found in the glacial drift of the Great Lakes region, three, 
including the largest, remained in the hands of the farming population 
without their nature being discovered, for periods of eight and one- 
half, seven, and fifteen years, respectively, so that it is not at all 
improbable that others now lie in the little collections of "pretty 
stones" and local curios which adorn the clock-shelves of country 
farm-houses. 



[10] 



CHAPTER II 

THE INDIANS OF LAKE GENEVA 

As perhaps every Wisconsin schoolboy knows, the first 
white man to set foot on Wisconsin soil was the French 
explorer, Jean Nicolet, who in 1634 landed on the west- 
ern shore of the great inland harbor that soon came to 
be called Green Bay — where, by the way, he fancied 
that he was landing in China, as he had set out to do! 
His reports of his journey mention that he found the 
Indian tribes known as the Pottawatomie residing upon 
the shores of the Bay and inland along its tributary 
streams. 

These Indians were of Algonquin stock. Their name 
meant, "The people of the place of the fire." It is 
otherwise more briefly rendered as meaning, literally, 
"The blowers." Probably to the Indian mind it had a 
significance that may be rendered as, "Keepers of the 
council fires." The earliest traditions of the Pottawat- 
omie, the Chippewas, and the Ottawas state that these 
three were originally one people, and they seem to have 
reached the region about the upper end of Lake Huron 
at about the same time, probably at a period not very 
long before the arrival of the white men. Here they 
separated, but retained a loose semi-confederacy, the 
Pottawatomie alleging that they occupied the territory 
around Green Bay by virtue of a mutual agreement 
among the three tribes, whereby the locations of their 
respective settlements and hunting grounds were assigned, 
and each tribe bound itself to make no treaty with out- 

[II] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

siders except as ratified in council by the representative 
headmen of the three nations. 

By the earhest explorers and travelers among the Pot- 
tawatomies it was reported as their welcome experience 
that these red men were less belligerent by nature and 
more amenable to the advance influences of the civilization 
of the period than the war-loving Iroquois of the east or 
the bloodthirsty and truculent Sioux and Winnebagoes of 
the farther north and west. Such appears to have been 
the character of many of them throughout the history of 
their contact with the white man. They were at once 
more kindly disposed toward the Christian teachings of the 
early missionaries, and more humane and civilized than 
many other tribes. One early comment describes them 
as "the most docile and affectionate toward the French 
of all the savages of the west." Another says: "Their 
natural politeness and readiness to oblige was extended 
toward strangers, which is very rare among these peoples." 
Their women were more reserved than was usual among 
Indians, and showed some tendency toward refinement 
of manners. 

Within a few years, however, of their first discovery by 
the advance guard of the fur traders and the missionaries 
of the Cross, there occurred a marked migration of the 
Pottawatomies, to an extent that was little less than a 
flight, before an invasion of their country by fiercer tribes 
from the north and west, the invaders being, at various 
points, the Menomonees, the Sauks and Foxes, and the 
Sioux. The precise cause of this onset is unknown, but it 
has been conjectured to have been associated with a desire 
to share in the rich annual harvests of the wild rice of the 

[12] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Green Bay region, the local beds of which primitive 
staple food were famous among the Indian tribes of the 
entire northern portion of the continent, and for the 
possession of whose principal sources of supply more than 
one early Indian war was waged. Whatever the cause, 
the less belligerent Pottawatomies gradually gave way 
before the approach of the warlike and hungry westerners. 
Some moved northward, to the Sault Ste. Marie, but the 
great majority migrated southward, and by the close of 
the seventeenth century had established themselves on 
Lake Winnebago, along the Milwaukee River, and at the 
southern end of Lake Michigan. A hundred years later 
they were in possession of the region around the head of 
Lake Michigan, from the Milwaukee River westward 
through what is now southern Wisconsin and southward 
about the Chicago River, to as far east as the Grand River 
in Michigan. Some had even moved as far as across 
Michigan to Lake Erie, and others to the banks of the 
Wabash, in Indiana. Within this territory they had 
about fifty villages, with a total population of about 
three thousand people. Till well into the nineteenth 
century they were, of course, like all the Indians of the 
continent up to the time of their successive contacts 
with the white man, still in the Stone Age period of 
human development. Their occasional copper articles 
of rude, native manufacture, of which more have been 
found in Wisconsin than anywhere else, were more 
regarded by them as curios, objects of interest or super- 
stition, amulets, and the like, than as material adapted 
for either weapons of war or the chase, or implements of 
domestic use. 

[13] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

The Pottawatomies sided actively with the French 
down to the peace of 1763. They were prominent in the 
uprising under Pontiac, and on the outbreak of the Revo- 
lution in 1775 they took up arms against the United 
States and continued hostilities until the treaty of Green- 
ville in 1795. They again went to war in the British inter- 
est in 18 12, the Fort Dearborn massacre at Chicago in 
August of that year being one of the moves to which they 
were inspired by British suggestion. A few of them, it is 
said in contemporary documents, remained loyal to the 
American side during the Revolution, among these being 
the bands resident at the mouth of the Milwaukee River 
and inland from the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, this 
territory including, of course, the Lake Geneva country. 
A few chiefs from this region were parties to the great 
treaty made with George Rogers Clark at Cahokia, 
Illinois, in September of 1778. 

On the first arrival of white men at Lake Geneva, and 
for undoubtedly many centuries before that time, there 
were three considerable settlements of these Pottawatomies 
upon its shores. These were naturally located at the 
points of easiest access to and from the Lake, at its eastern 
end, on the western shore of its largest bay, and at its 
western end. By these residents the Lake was called in 
the Pottawatomie tongue " Kishwauketoe, " or "Clear 
Water," a most interesting name in view of the fact — 
mentioned in the previous chapter — that its waters have 
been proved by modern scientific tests to be the clearest 
of all the lakes of southern Wisconsin. Their chief, 
" Maunk-suck," or "Big Foot" by name, lived at the 
western village, though he appears to have maintained 

[14] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

another domestic establishment on the shores of what 
soon came to be known as "WilHams Bay." It seems 
probable that his standing as the headman of the Lake 
Geneva Pottawatomies was a matter of considerable 
duration, and that for some time before its waters were 
actually seen by the whites it was commonly known to 
them as "Big Foot's lake," the early French mentions 
alluding to it as "Lac Gros-pied," a name early Anglicized 
into "Big Foot Lake." The total population of the three 
villages was estimated by the first white men as including 
about five hundred souls. 

The Indians living about the Lake on the occasion of 
the first visits of the whites were, however, by no means 
the earliest occupants of its neighborhood. For no doubt 
many centuries before this, its comparatively modern 
period, the surrounding country had been the scene of a 
considerable degree of population by the earlier and 
little-known primitive people, commonly, if unscientifi- 
cally, spoken of as the "Mound Builders." It is now 
generally accepted by the best authorities that these 
were in no way a people separate or different from the 
later race of Indians, but were merely their earlier and 
ruder ancestors. Their habitation of the country around 
the Lake is amply testified to by the existence of many of 
those rude, often symboHcally shaped, mounds of earth 
which have given their makers their popular, if not 
overaccurate, name. Many of these earthworks were 
found by the first white settlers both about Lake Geneva 
and in the vicinity of Delavan Lake. Their discoverers 
described some of them as representing in their outlines 
turtles, lizards, panthers, a drawn bow and arrow — this 

[151 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

last said to have been on the watershed between Lake 
Como and WilHams Bay — and the hke. They were thus 
uniform with the large number of similar mounds known 
to have existed, and a few of which have been carefully 
preserved, at many points in the central and middle 
western states. Interestingly enough, the so-called "effigy 
mounds," representing in their outlines animal forms, 
are, with but three considerable exceptions, confined to 
southern Wisconsin and the immediately adjoining states. 
It is now not generally believed by our more modern 
archaeologists that these structures date from anything 
hke the great antiquity once somewhat universally and 
credulously assigned to them. Indeed, some of them 
seem to have been abandoned, so to speak, or the time 
to have terminated when they were regarded with rever- 
ence and therefore presumably kept clear of tree growths 
and the like, only about a century or so before the coming 
of the white men, as forest growths of a hundred years 
and more in age had sprung up on the sites of many. 
This agrees with the information recorded by one of the 
first white settlers at the hamlet of Geneva, who took the 
trouble to count the annual rings on the sawed stump of 
a large tree cut on one of these erections, and found them, 
as he put it, "nearly one hundred in number." Indeed, 
in some of these mounds, used for burial purposes, the 
finding of articles of European manufacture proves 
conclusively that they were erected later than the fifteenth 
century. On the arrival of the first pioneers of the Lake 
Geneva country, there was found near Delavan Lake a 
mound, long since leveled by the plow, 80 feet in length, 
with near it a site closely set with stones of cobblestone 

[16] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

size, many of these cracked by the action of fire, indicating 
a place of considerable resort in primitive times, and 
possibly of ceremonial significance. Of all these earlier 
inhabitants and their ways, however, the Indians of the 
neighborhood at the time of the coming of the white man 
had no knowledge and could give no information. 

But whether earlier or later residents about the waters 
and hills of Lake Geneva, its Indian population dwelt in 
a barbaric paradise, a land abounding, if not in "milk and 
and honey," yet in their equivalents to the red man's 
palate and his needs. Food and shelter were alike 
unhmited and easily available. The unbroken forests as 
literally swarmed with game and fur-bearing animals as 
the Lake abounded in fish and water fowl. The soil was 
everywhere conducive to the growth of the rude gardens 
which the squaws of the settlements planted with corn, 
beans, squashes, and tobacco. The everywhere present 
hard-maple trees offered with each spring an unlimited 
amount of sweet sap which the toiling women converted 
successfully, if crudely, into vast supplies of coarse sugar, 
to be traded with or stored up for the rest of the year. 
Early Wisconsin and Illinois trading posts often had 
thousands of pounds of this native-made delicacy in their 
warehouses, received in barter and stored for shipment to 
eastern markets. Another common and favorite food was 
prepared by gathering their corn when "in the milk," 
and steaming the unhusked ears in pits, dug in the earth, 
first heated by hot stones, then the stones removed, and 
the corn piled in and covered with earth. When con- 
sidered "done," the ears were removed and husked, the 
kernels shelled off and roasted, and when dried were 

[17] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

packed in skin bags for preservation, forming a large part 
of the winter's food supply. This dried corn was also 
relished by the whites, who often traded with the Indians 
for it. Many roots and tubers, especially of marsh and 
swamp-growing plants, were gathered for food, as were, 
of course, the immense quantities of nuts and wild plums, 
berries, grapes, and cherries of many localities. Many of 
these were rudely dried or otherwise preserved by the 
squaws for use during the winter, although in ways which 
would hardly appeal to a more epicurean taste, as in the 
case of the wild cherries, which were vigorously pounded 
to crush the stones, when the resultant mass was pressed 
into cakes and dried in the sun — and eventually eaten, 
crushed stones and all! Indeed, nothing in the lavish 
bounty of Nature that was at all edible, by their primitive 
standards of savage custom or according to their frequent 
necessities, was overlooked by the Indian. The skunk 
and the woodchuck were as welcome articles of diet as is 
still the porcupine of the northern woods to its Chippewa 
captors, by whom the writer has seen more than one fat 
specimen dextrously deprived of its prickly integument 
and dropped into the stew kettle. Field mice were 
tidbits to the Indian children. The frog and the snake, 
when large enough to afford a morsel, came never amiss. 
Their own half-domesticated dogs were eaten when judged 
too old for other usefulness, and many a litter of super- 
fluous puppies formed a notable family feast. 

The reeds and grasses of every swamp afforded material 
for ingeniously woven grass mats, characteristic of these 
tribes, and, of course, the work of the squaws. The 
rushes were woven together with cordage made chiefly 

[i8] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

from the inner bark of the linden, manipulated by 
means of a flat, needle-like bone shuttle, the resulting 
mats, 5 or 6 feet square and quite firm and substantial, 
serving many purposes in the Pottawatomie domestic 
economy. In common with all other forest-dwelling 
Indians the Pottawatomies never used the "tepee" style 
of shelter, with its conical structure of skins placed 
upon or fastened to tall "lodge poles," placed apart at 
the bottom and coming together at the top. These were 
the characteristic and readily portable dweUings of the 
more nomadic "plains Indians" of the western prairies. 
The more or less permanent lodges of the Pottawatomies 
were built upon arched poles, about which the sides were 
formed of the above-mentioned woven grass or reed mats, 
the roof consisting usually of large slabs of bark removed 
whole from the trees. Within these circular, domed wig- 
wams there was, of course, the central fireplace, with stout 
sticks driven on each side of the fire, the crosspiece support- 
ing the family kettle. The earthen floor was covered with 
other mats and the walls were hung with skins, furs, 
domestic implements, and the warrior's arms and treas- 
ures. The more pretentious lodges had low benches 
around the sides, made of poles laid side by side on 
supports, serving as seats by day and couches by night. 
The first knowledge of Lake Geneva came to the whites 
through the channels of the fur trade. A wandering 
French trader is believed to have been the first white man 
actually to see the Lake; for so John Brink, the original 
government surveyor, stated to Solomon Juneau in a 
reported conversation in the latter's trading post at 
Milwaukee in the later thirties. Long before his time, 

[19] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

however, the Indians of the Lake settlements had been 
accustomed to carry their skins and other articles of trade 
to the nearest posts, at old Fort Winnebago, now Portage; 
the famous Juneau store at Milwaukee; or the widely 
known and favorite trading post owned by the Kinzie 
family at Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago 
River. Thus the highly prized and eagerly sought 
contributions of the white man to the life of the Indian — 
clothing materials, articles of personal adornment, guns 
and ammunition, and, of course, the red man's dearest 
curse of "fire water" in the form of whiskey and brandy — 
were already in every Indian lodge about the Lake when 
the first visit of white people occurred of which we have 
definite information. 

The Lake Geneva Indians appear to have had few 
horses, that possession "which transformed the Indian, 
which changed him from a mild and peaceful seeker after 
food into a raider and a warrior." They did have a few, 
at least by the middle thirties, close to the time of their 
removal from the Lake neighborhood, for the first settlers 
long remembered that there had existed a race course along 
the level beach south of Fontana, where there took place 
not only foot races among the young braves of Big Foot's 
favorite village, but where the few fortunate owners of 
the horses of the settlement were wont to test the speed 
of their steeds against one another, and often, Indian 
fashion, to bet their all upon the contests. 

The Pottawatomies of the Wisconsin waterways had, 
however, no imperative need for horses, their ordinary 
means of transport being largely by the dugout canoes 
which were fashioned with no small degree of labor from 

[20] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

walnut or basswood logs. With these they navigated the 
rivers, streams, and lakes of the country on every errand 
of fishing, travel, hunting, warfare, or the conveyance of 
their wares for trade. Unmoved by any such aesthetic 
sentiment as is expressed in Walter Savage Landor's 
poetic exclamation: 

Oh, who upon earth could ever cut down a linden! 

the warriors of Big Foot's villages considered themselves 
but ill equipped for either peace or war until each had made 
for himself such a canoe, and for this purpose the big 
lindens or "basswoods" that grew on the lower slopes 
of the hills about the Lake were a favorite material, as 
they were more easily cut down, split, hollowed with 
fire, ax, or tomahawk, and rounded into shape, than the 
harder black walnut trees. Such a craft, however, once 
well made, would almost last forever, and many such 
served generation after generation of owners. 

Happily for the white comers to southeastern Wiscon- 
sin, the generally peaceful character of the Pottawatomies 
and their ready affihation with the white men left the brief 
records of their mutual intercourse unstained by any such 
tragedies and horrors as occurred where fiercer tribes 
thought to check the irresistible tide of the westward 
progress of American settlement. The frequent misunder- 
standings between white and red men, their usual total 
inability to understand one another's accustomed ideas and 
points of view, the resentment by the Indian of the frequent 
brutality and injustice with which he was treated by rough 
and coarse frontiersmen and dishonest traders, the youth- 
ful brave's eagerness to avail himself of any excuse for 

[21] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

warfare and plunder, and the white adventurer's pro- 
verbial and often expressed conviction that "the only 
good Indian is a dead Indian," all combined to render 
much of the story of the contacts of the pioneer and the 
savage a chronicle of frequent and widespread terror and 
of bloody massacres fearfully avenged. 

Such a tale is that of the Fort Dearborn massacre of 
1 812, ofttold and ever more incomprehensible, as it 
seems to us today, in the almost suicidal conduct of even 
those who suffered most. 

Another was the brief Winnebago War of 1827. 
That this outbreak, which threatened the relations 
between the races throughout all the country between the 
Illinois River on the south and the Chippewa on the north, 
was brought to a speedy check by the efforts of Governor 
Cass of Michigan, to which Wisconsin belonged at the 
time, was due to some extent to warnings received from 
incidents of which Lake Geneva was the stage. In the 
summer of that year, the Winnebagoes of Wisconsin were 
in a mood for war, as a result of many dishonesties and 
outrages suffered by their people at the hands of brutal 
characters along the frontier. Their messengers had 
secretly reached many other tribes and villages with 
announcements of the contemplated uprising and exhorta- 
tions to the warriors to join in the extermination of the 
encroaching whites. 

Toward the last of June an attack was made on a 
provision boat on the Mississippi River, and a family of 
white settlers was barbarously murdered near Prairie du 
Chien. Early in July the Pottawatomies of the Lake 
Geneva neighborhood gathered at Fort Dearborn to 

[22] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

receive the annual tribal payment from the government. 
Among those attending were the band who, with their 
chief, Big Foot, lived about the shores of the Lake. 
Ordinarily most friendly toward the whites at Chicago, 
especially toward the Kinzie family, on this occasion they 
manifested an unfriendliness so unusual as to arouse 
suspicion. This conduct, coupled with the recently 
received reports of the bloodshed in the north, determined 
the white men of Chicago to send two trustworthy Indians 
to learn what they might from Big Foot and his warriors. 
The men selected for this mission of trust, upon which 
so much might, and did indeed, depend, deserve especial 
mention and remembrance. One was a half-breed 
Pottawatomie chief known to the Indians by the name of 
"The Sauganash," or " the Englishman," and to the whites 
as Billy Caldwell. He was reported to have been born 
in Canada about 1780, his father being a British officer 
by the name of Caldwell and his mother a Pottawatomie. 
He was educated in Roman Catholic schools, wrote 
English and French with facility, and was master of 
several Indian dialects. From 1807 to the battle of the 
Thames in October, 18 13, he was in the British interest 
and was intimately associated with Tecumseh, whose 
"secretary" he is said to have been. The Kinzie family 
always claimed that his presence and intervention saved 
their lives and those of their relatives from the ferocity 
of a band of marauding Pottawatomie warriors from the 
Wabash at the time of the Fort Dearborn massacre. 
After the battle of the Thames he transferred his allegiance 
to the United States, and in 1820 established his residence 
at Fort Dearborn. Six years later he had the unusual 

[23] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

recognition, for one of Indian blood in that day, of being 
chosen a local justice of the peace, and one of the early 
frontier inns of the little town of Chicago was named 
after him. He died at Council Bluffs, Iowa, in September, 
1 841, at about sixty years of age. 

The other emissary was a full-blood Ottawa named 
"Shabbona." (The original form of the name has long 
been disputed and will perhaps never be determined, as 
there are several spellings in the early records.) By the 
whites he was often called "Chambley," being said to 
have been named for a Captain Jacques de Chambley. 
His Indian name was claimed to be of Pottawatomie origin, 
and to mean "built like a bear." He was born on the 
Maumee River in 1775, his father being a nephew of 
Pontiac. The son grew up to be a man of fine parts and 
magnificent presence, migrating in his youth to Michigan 
and becoming one of Tecumseh's lieutenants, fighting by 
his side when that chief was killed at the battle of the 
Thames. After the battle, incensed at the treatment of 
his Indian allies by the British commander, he joined 
The Sauganash in transferring their services to the 
Americans, to whom they remained ever loyal. Joining 
the Pottawatomies, he married among them and was 
chosen their "peace chief," in which capacity he was 
their spokesman at various councils held by representatives 
of the United States government, chiefly at Chicago. 

On being intrusted with their mission, the two spies, 
for such they of course were, set out at once for Lake 
Geneva. On reaching the head of the Lake, The 
Sauganash secreted himself to watch developments, while 
Shabbona deliberately entered the lodges of Big Foot's 

[24] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

village on the western shore. Here he was at once seized, 
made a prisoner, and threatened with death as a known 
friend of the whites, against whom the contemplated 
hostilities were impending. DissembHng, he claimed that 
having heard rumors of the coming war he had come to 
take counsel with Big Foot and his band. Succeeding 
in allaying the suspicion with which he was regarded, he 
was set free, and he and his companion returned separately 
to Chicago with definite information that the Lake 
Geneva bands were ready for the warpath. Summons 
were immediately sent out for volunteers to rally at 
Chicago for resistance to the expected attack. At the 
same time Governor Cass had embarked upon an 1800- 
mile tour by canoe of the waterways of the frontier 
settlements, covering the Wisconsin, Mississippi, and 
Illinois tributaries and starting troops from every direc- 
tion, regulars from Forts Jefferson, Snelling, and Howard, 
and volunteers from the lead mines of Galena, converging 
on the country of the conspiring Winnebagoes. These 
were not slow to perceive the detection of their plot and 
the hopelessness of resistance, and agreed with Cass in a 
treaty of peace in a council held at Butte des Morts, 
Wisconsin, in the month of August. As a result, a condi- 
tion of peace along the border was believed to have been 
so fully achieved that in the spring of 1831 the Fort 
Dearborn garrison was removed to Fort Howard at Green 
Bay. To this movement of troops was due the first 
known visit of white men to Lake Geneva, as related in 
another chapter. 

Peace between the races in the Mississippi Valley was, 
however, impossible as long as the red man's nature 

[25] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

remained, and while the white men with whom he chiefly 
came in contact took every advantage of him, cheated 
him in trade, coveted his lands, brutally insulted his 
women, and plied him with whiskey to accomplish their 
sinister ends. From such causes arose the Black Hawk 
War of 1832, of which Mr. M. M. Quaife, one of its fore- 
most historians, says that ahke in its causes and its 
conduct it "constitutes one of the saddest chapters in 
the long story of the spoliation of the red race at the 
hands of the white." During its earliest secret prepara- 
tions among the Indians, the Pottawatomie settlements 
were divided over the question of joining the great Sauk 
chieftain and his followers. At a council of the allied 
tribes in February, Black Hawk gathered that Big Foot 
and his Lake Geneva braves were eager for the fray, and 
he counted accordingly on their addition to his forces. 
At the same council, however, Shabbona espoused the 
cause of the whites and endeavored to convince Black 
Hawk that his proposed uprising would only bring further 
disaster to the Indians. Unsuccessful in checkins; the 
plans for war, his espousal of friendship for the whites 
excited the deadly ill will of many of the Indians, but his 
influence over his own tribe was sufficient to keep it from 
agreeing to join in the proposed campaign. Nor did this 
friend of the white man content himself with refusing 
to aid their foes. On the actual outbreak of the war, at 
a date probably in the first week in April, Shabbona and 
his son Peps mounted their ponies one midnight and, from 
a point near the present town of Princeton, Illinois, set 
out to warn the settlers of the impending danger. They 
covered the territory of Black Hawk's intended advance, 

[26] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

reaching Chicago in time to put the inhabitants on their 
guard. Vivid contemporary descriptions exist of Shab- 
bona's tour of the Rock River Valley, galloping along the 
trails from one isolated farm or clearing to the next, 
wholly unarmed, to show that he was on an errand of 
peace to those to whom he came, warning family after 
family of the approaching hostilities, with the results that 
these hastened to central points for the common defense. 
In revenge for this act, which so largely frustrated the 
gratification of the bloodthirst of the hostiles, various 
Sauk and Fox warriors many times in later years endeav- 
ored to murder him, and did succeed in killing his son and 
a nephew. On the enforced movement of the Pottawat- 
omies, in 1836, to their new reservation in the west, 
Shabbona went with them, but returned shortly to the 
two sections of land in De Kalb County which the govern- 
ment had granted him for his services. During a later 
absence he suffered the outrage of having his land pass 
into the hands of land speculators, who secured its sale 
on the ground that he had abandoned it. In 1855, 
however, some appreciative citizens of Ottawa, Illinois, 
bought him a small farm on the banks of the Illinois River, 
two miles above the town of Seneca, in Grundy County, 
and here he passed his remaining years. He received 
from the United States government an annuity of %ioo 
a year for his services at the time of the Black Hawk War, 
and this, with occasional contributions from his many 
white friends, kept him from want. He died at the town 
of Morris, in Grundy County, in 1859. On October 23, 
1903, a large memorial monument in the form of a great 
granite bowlder was erected over his grave in Evergreen 

[27] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Cemetery. Several excellent likenesses of him are extant, 
and may be seen in Bulletin No. 30 of the American 
Bureau of Ethnology, Part Two, and in the Introductory 
Volume of the Centennial History of Illinois. A fine 
portrait of him is in the collection of the Illinois State 
Historical Society. 

To return to our story of Lake Geneva and the attitude 
of its Indian residents toward the Black Hawk War, the 
timely warning given the frontier settlers by Shabbona 
and his son greatly cooled the ardor of Big Foot and his 
followers, and they did not move to join the famous Sauk 
chieftain. That leader, soon finding that he had aroused 
against him forces with which he could not begin to cope, 
led his already doomed warriors on a long retreat through 
northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. Hard on his 
track pressed the little American frontier army composed 
of General Henry Atkinson's regulars and several regi- 
ments of Illinois militia and volunteers, whose blood was 
up and who were determined to put an end forthwith 
to all Indian uprisings along the whole frontier. These 
forced him from the retreat in the wilderness about Lake 
Koshkonong, where he had taken refuge, and where he 
had sent on ahead the women and children of his forces 
for safety. On July 21, while crossing to the west side 
of the Wisconsin River, he was overtaken by the volunteer 
force under General James D. Henry, and defeated with 
heavy losses. The flight and pursuit passed through the 
"Four Lakes country," where Madison's stately dome 
rises today, westward to the Mississippi at the mouth 
of the Bad Axe River, 40 miles above Prairie du Chien. 
Here, in the first week in August, the forces of the hostiles 

[28] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

were surrounded as they were trying to effect a crossing 
of the river, and were practically annihilated. No 
accurate estimate of the losses of the Indians exists, but 
they were so outnumbered by their pursuers that the 
engagement became little other than a massacre, and of 
i,ooo persons who set out with Black Hawk on the 
warpath in the previous April, hardly more than 150 
survived, fifty of these being prisoners, mostly women and 
children. Their leader himself escaped to a hiding-place 
at the Dells of the Wisconsin, where he was captured a 
few days later by some Winnebagoes. Turned over to 
the Americans, he was for a short time a prisoner at 
Fortress Monroe, but was later returned to Iowa in free- 
dom, dying in October, 1838. 

General Winfield Scott had been sent from the Atlantic 
seaboard to command the American forces, but arrived 
only to find the fighting over. Among the later famous 
men who in their youth took part in the campaign were 
Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and Zachary Taylor. 

And ought we not to accord a high meed of praise to 
the Indian friends of the white men, the Pottawatomie 
chiefs, Shabbona and The Sauganash, themselves veterans 
of the warpath, who preferred to incur taunts of cowardice 
most bitter to the Indian mind, and who imperiled their 
lives by their fidelity, to save many who were strangers 
to them ? To their efforts it was perhaps chiefly due that 
the country about Lake Geneva never rang with the fatal 
war whoop, and that the hearthstones of its settlers were 
never stained with their own blood. 

A description by a visiting missionary (Rev. A. S. 
Dwinwell), who in 1836 was one of the early white visitors 

[29] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

to Big Foot's village, gives some details of the appearance 
of the cluster of huts along what is now the Fontana 
shore. From where Buena Vista Park now stands, these 
extended for a quarter of a mile southward and to the 
foot of the high bluffs behind. The lodges, constructed 
in the described Pottawatomie manner, of mats of woven 
rushes on arched poles and roofed over with bark, were 
small, each only about lo feet in diameter. In the center 
of the group stood the larger, more elaborate lodge of 
the chief, serving on occasion as the council house of the 
men of the tribe. It was further distinguished by a tall 
red-cedar pole before it, from which the bark had been 
stripped, of considerable size and height, described in the 
reminiscences of early settlers as "about twice as tall as 
a modern telephone pole." This is frequently spoken of 
in early mentions as "the chief's flagstaff" or "the council 
pole," and a portion of it remained standing for decades 
after the Indians had left the country. Part, indeed, of 
it is still preserved in the museum of the State Historical 
Society at Madison, while other portions of its wood are 
in the possession of fortunate persons interested in the 
local history. A piece that appears to have formed its 
extreme tip is in the possession of the writer. The loca- 
tion of this lodge of the chief and its designating pole is 
still known, having been situated on the rising ground 
south of the main east-and-west road through Fontana 
today and just back of the residence and garden of 
Mr. M. T. Barbour. 

On a visit made to the village in 1833, John Brink, 
later the government surveyor of the Lake district, saw 
suspended in a great bur-oak tree near the lake shore 

[30I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

east of the Indian village a hollowed-out butternut log, 
serving as a coffin in the not uncommon Indian "tree 
burial." It contained the body of a son of the chief, 
believed to have been about fourteen years of age. The 
coffin was made by splitting a 6-foot log and hollowing 
out one portion for the reception of the remains, with 
which were placed a pipe and tobacco, the youth's bow 
and arrows, and some silver ornaments. The other part 
of the log was then placed to serve as a cover, fastened 
with wooden pegs, and the whole lifted and fastened in 
a crotch of the tree. The father's reason for this disposal 
of the body was touchingly given to the inquiring whites 
as, "He was always so fond of looking at the Lake that 
now his spirit shall be able always to look at its waters." 
On a later visit, three years afterward. Brink reported 
this coffin to have disappeared. Local report laid its 
molestation to the vandal hands of rough characters 
among the passing westward migrants of the time. The 
skeleton of its occupant was long retained in the possession 
of a Dr. Wood, a well-known early physician of the 
neighborhood. Despite rumors to the contrary, and 
assertions even today that the tree originally containing 
this "burial" is still standing, the consensus of opinion 
of the surviving oldest residents of the village of Fontana 
is that the actual oak tree used for the purpose was cut 
down in the winter of 1865 by Mr. C. B. Hollister, then 
a young man of the locality and still (1922) a resident of 
Fontana. Its location remains well known, at the water's 
edge on the Buena Vista Park shore. 

The burial place of at least two other members of Big 
Foot's domestic establishments were well known to the first 

[31] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

white families of the Lake country. Near the lodges clus- 
tered on the low, sloping ground rising from the northwest 
curve of Williams Bay, at a date shortly before the removal 
of the Indians in 1836, two of the chief's wives had been 
"buried" on a rude framework raised above the ground. 
Their remains were dressed in fine broadcloth decorated 
with many pierced silvered disks, of which the squaws 
were very fond, both material and ornaments being among 
the more valuable articles carried in stock by all the 
trading posts and greatly desired and prized by their 
Indian purchasers. Their wrists and forearms bore brace- 
lets and flat bangles of silver, and their ears were pierced 
and hung with similar trinkets. Beside each was placed 
a pipe and tobacco, food for the long journey to the 
spirit world, and a tin pail filled with whiskey to cheer 
them on the way! The whole was then roofed over, for 
protection against the weather, with large slabs of bark. 
On the departure of the Indians from the neighborhood, 
the bodies were removed from their above-ground position 
and interred on the spot. The place is now (1922) a 
knoll in a lot next east of the residence of Mr. E. H. 
Hollister, on Elm Street, in the village of Williams Bay. 
The tradition indicating this as the grave site was verified 
by Mr. Hollister in the summer of 1920, when a slight 
excavation brought to light the skeleton of one of the 
women. With it were found many of the above-mentioned 
burial ornaments, fragments of the broadcloth in which 
the remains had been wrapped, the perforated disks, 
originally silvered, tiny bells, finger rings, and earrings, 
and not less than eight hundred beads, of both "trade" 
and native origin, which were carefully sifted out of the 

[32] 



mmm>^6=mz 







POTTAWATOMIE INDIAN REMAINS FROM WILLIAMS BAY 

(These remains are almost certainly those of one of the squaws of Big Foot, 
chief of the Lake Geneva Pottawatomie, as the site and the accompanying articles all 
conform to the evidences of witnesses of the original above-ground "burial" in i8j6. 
The articles comprise ear decorations, pendent bells, finger rings, pierced silver disks 
originally sewed to the outer garments, and eight hundred beads. The two upper 
strings of beads are "trade" beads of blue glass, the two strings of smaller beads are 
of similar origin, white and brown. The lower string consists of a few pieces of pierced 
shell beads, wampum variety. The three lower articles, left to right: piece of deer- 
skin moccasin; two pieces of black broadcloth.) 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

surrounding earth by Mrs. Hollister. From their location 
with the remains these had evidently formed a necklace, 
a beaded girdle, and the usual elaborate bead decoration 
of the finer styles of moccasins. The skull, the beads, 
other ornaments, portions of the broadcloth wrappings 
and of a skin moccasin are shown in an accompanying 
illustration. With the remains were also found several 
leg bones of fowls, perhaps of prairie chickens, which may 
have been part of the food placed with the remains. 
The skeletons of two small children were found in the 
same grave, and with these the bones of a small dog, 
possibly a pet killed and buried with them to be their 
companion in the spirit world. 

Many other interments were in this neighborhood, 
which was a favorite burying ground of the Indian 
residents. These dotted the "oak openings" where are 
now the lawns and slopes of Williams Bay, from Geneva 
Street south to the woods of Conference Point. Less pre- 
tentious in character, these were generally ordinary graves, 
a low mound raised above each. In the eighties the 
writer was present at explorations of these graves, which 
disclosed chiefly a few simple flint implements of domestic 
use, skin scrapers for "fleshing" hides before smoke 
tanning, and the like, indicating the resting-place of other 
squaws, whose characteristic domestic labors their rela- 
tives evidently considered would continue beside the 
Happy Hunting Grounds. 

The purchase by the United States government of the 
lands of the Pottawatomies living west of Lake Michigan 
was efi^ected at a council, the last and greatest Indian 
gathering ever held at Chicago, in September of 1833. 

[2>3\ 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Contemporary estimates of the number of Indians present 
range from five to eight thousand. It was said that 
every warrior of the tribes concerned in the proposed 
negotiations attended the grand powwow, bringing his 
squaws, papooses, ponies, and dogs with him. These 
all encamped throughout the woodlands and prairies 
surrounding the mushroom village of Chicago, with its 
hundred-odd frame, clapboard, and log houses, and its 
single business street, now South Water Street. 

Mr. M. M. Quaife has described the scenes attendant 
upon the great purchase by saying: 

The thousands of savages congregated to barter away their birth- 
right presented an extraordinary spectacle. Those who possessed 
the means generally attired themselves in fantastic fashion and gaudy 
colors. All of the men, except the very poorest, wore breechclouts 
and blankets. Most of them added to these articles leggings of various 
colors and degrees of ornamentation; while those who were able 
disported themselves in loosely flowing jackets, rich sashes, and gaudy 
shawl or handkerchief turbans. The squaws wore blue or printed 
cotton cloths and the richer ones had embroidered petticoats and 
shawls. The various articles of clothing of both men and women 
were covered with gewgaws of silver and brass, glass beads and mirrors, 
such as had from time immemorial been supplied to the Indians by 
the traders. The women wore ornaments in their ears and occasionally 
in their noses, while the faces of both sexes were bedaubed with paint, 
blue, black, white and vermillion, applied according to more or less 
fanciful designs.^ 

Plank huts and a large open shed had been erected on 
the north side of the river to serve as accommodations for 
the negotiators. The commissioners representing the 
United States were Governor George B. Porter of 
Michigan, Thomas J. V. Owen, Indian agent at Chicago, 

' M. M. Quaife, Chicago and the Old Northwest, chap. xv. 

[34] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and William Weatherford. On the afternoon of Septem- 
ber 21, the council fire was kindled, and the commissioners 
and interpreters faced the twenty or thirty chieftains 
representing the assembled tribesmen. After several days 
of discussion, argument, and persuasion, the chiefs one 
after another ''submitted to the inevitable," as Mr. 
Quaife says, and the terms of the treaty were concluded 
and accepted. 

The final terms stipulated that the Pottawatomies and 
allied tribes should cede their lands, supposed to contain 
about 5,000,000 acres, and within three years' time should 
remove to a reservation of corresponding area in the 
West. The United States agreed to transport them 
thither and pay the cost of their support for one year 
after their arrival, and nearly $1,000,000 was to be 
expended in various ways for their benefit. They were 
to receive for twenty years an annuity of $16,000, and 
mills, blacksmith shops, physicians, the promotion of 
education, the domestic arts, and other contributions of 
civilization were to be provided. Influential chiefs and 
those who had proved themselves the friends of the whites 
were rewarded with annuities, compensation for previous 
services or for losses suffered during the Indian wars; 
and what seem today peculiarly large sums and grants 
were awarded to many whites and half-breeds on various 
claims against the Pottawatomies for losses, debts, and the 
like. Eighty thousand dollars' worth of goods were 
distributed among the gathered Indians, and $50,000 in 
silver coin as their first payment of their annuities. 
Much of this quickly passed into the hands of the waiting 
traders and others who had assembled to traffic with 

[35I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

the suddenly enriched red men, but it was estimated that 
130,000 were carried away on their return to their homes. 
Fortunately the lake vessels laden with whiskey which 
traders had ordered for the occasion were so retarded by 
several days of strong south winds that they did not reach 
the harbor in time for the disposal of their ruin-laden 
cargoes. 

The final scene of the great council was a tremendous 
"war dance" in which not less than eight hundred warriors 
participated. From the council house on the north shore 
of the river they paraded, naked save for a strip about the 
loins, bodies and faces painted in brilliant colors, their 
hair decorated with hawk and eagle feathers. Led by 
savage "musicians" beating on hollow vessels, and all 
yeUing at the tops of their voices, they paraded both 
sides of the river for the benefit of the spectators, both 
red and white, and formed a last spectacle of primitive 
life and savagery which had perhaps never been surpassed 
in the tragic drama of the history of the red man in 
America. 

The Pottawatomies of the Lake Geneva settlements 
were among the last to be removed in accordance with the 
terms of the treaty. In the fall of 1836 they were taken 
in wagons to the reservation of 5,000,000 acres near 
Lawrence, Kansas, from which place some went on to a 
preferred residence in the Indian Territory. At the time 
it was said that their willingness to leave for the offered 
western home was due in large measure to a recent severe 
epidemic of whooping cough, which proved fatal to many 
of their number, adults and children alike, and which 
their superstitious natures readily attributed to the work 

[36] 



I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

of evil spirits. But the wide and almost treeless plains 
of Kansas proved little to the liking of those who had 
known the wooded hills, abundant game, and fish-filled 
waters of Lake Geneva, and in later years more than one 
little group straggled over the long trail back to the 
remembered home of their youth, some continuing on 
northward to the then still untouched woods and waters 
of northern Wisconsin, there to pass their remaining days. 
The hour of their departure from the Lake has been 
described by the few early settlers, who looked on while 
the chief visited for the last time the resting-place of his 
wives beside Williams Bay. Turning away with tears 
in eyes little accustomed to express any tenderness, he 
commended the spot to Israel Williams, the first white 
resident in the neighborhood, whose name has been 
perpetuated in that of the beautiful bay and its little 
village, and with whom Big Foot had established relations 
of friendliness. From here "Maunk-suck" returned to 
his lodge at Fontana, where he stood with an arm about 
his "council pole," emblem of his primitive and now 
passing rule of all he surveyed. Here he looked long and 
for the last time out over the waters of the Lake, finally 
turning away to go to the nearby log cabin of James 
Van Slyke, the first white settler in the township, with 
whose wife, widely known as a dauntless and resourceful 
type of frontierswoman, he was on friendly terms. The 
Van Slyke claim covered a large part of what is now the 
site of the village of Fontana. Bidding this white woman 
friend of himself and his people an impressive farewell, 
the next day he led his followers on their long journey 
toward the setting sun. 

[37] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

While the Indian settlements around the Lake, thus 
terminated, numbered at the time of the arrival of the 
white men only about five hundred individuals of both 
sexes and all ages, in the three villages, there is ample 
evidence that the whole surrounding country had been 
for unknown centuries a favorite residence and a famous 
hunting ground. In addition to the early mounds 
described, the great numbers of arrow and spearheads 
that have been found everywhere around the Lake and 
that may still be found by diligent searchers of the soil, 
tell their own story. The number of such finds is far 
beyond the impression of the average man. It is no 
exaggeration to say that in the Lake neighborhood, since 
the coming of the white man, with his clearing of the 
ground and his upturning of the soil for agricultural, 
building, and other purposes, these flint objects, the 
great majority of them arrowheads, have been found in a 
total of thousands. One man, a Mr. Lambert Lindquist, 
a workingman residing at Williams Bay, has made a 
specialty of searching for these for several years, with the 
result that he has found several hundred in all, including 
many remarkable and beautiful specimens. On a single 
area within the limits of the village of Williams Bay of 
less than an acre in size, he has picked up more than two 
hundred. Some of the finest of his specimens are shown 
in an accompanying illustration. In preparation of the 
grounds of an estate on the north shore of^the Lake, near 
The Narrows, for the erection of a residence, the workmen 
who cleared the ground before starting the excavation 
filled two pint measures with the arrowheads they picked 
up. It may almost be said that even today a careful 

[38] 




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THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

searching of any considerable area of ground in the 
neighborhood of the Lake where the surface soil has been 
broken up or overturned, as by plowing or the washing 
of waves and streams, is likely to be rewarded by the 
finding of these relics of past inhabitants. The would-be 
arrow-finder, however, must bear in mind the conditions 
of successful search, as stated by John Burroughs in his 
essay on "The Art of Seeing Things." "If we think 
arrowheads," he wrote, "as Thoreau did, we shall pick 
up arrowheads in every field." The equipment for the 
hunt is chiefly mental, and consists in knowing thoroughly 
the objects one is looking for and their every possible 
aspect, whether fully uncovered or half-hidden, and not 
least of all, the places where they are likeliest to be found. 
The great numbers in which these Indian arrowpoints 
have thus been found are significant both as to the length 
of time when the country was inhabited by the red men, 
and the immense abundance of game of all sorts through- 
out the centuries of such occupation. The primitive 
Indian's arrow differed from the white man's bullet in 
that the red man always recovered his projectile if possible, 
in case of a missed shot or the like, as it had cost him 
much time and labor in its manufacture. Arrows were 
thus used over and over again, and every arrowpoint 
found, if not broken and so perhaps discarded, represents 
a shaft lost by its owner, in the earth, in the snow, in 
underbrush, or other circumstance of the chase. It 
represents also the many shots for which it had been 
used before being thus lost by hunter or warrior. The 
fact, therefore, that in many places these implements 
have been found, on disturbing the original surface soil, 

[39] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

as abundantly as if they had been scattered over the area 
scanned, points to unguessed ages during which these 
were the principal weapons of the inhabitants, and 
indicates the vast numbers in which the swarming animal 
life of the forest offered everywhere the objects of the 
hunter's aim. 

Everyone, perhaps, with any knowledge of American 
history, has some degree of interest in such arrowheads. 
Certainly no one can be interested in the past of the Lake 
Geneva country without feeling the fascination of these 
rehcs of its antiquity. It may be of value, therefore, to 
add a word as to their production, if only by way of answer 
to the question of modern men or women as they handle 
one of these fragments of thin, pointed stones and exclaim: 
"How in the world did they ever make such things ?" 
As a matter of fact, though the process of manufacture is 
practically a '*lost art" today, it is not hard to understand, 
or even to acquire by a little pains and practice. The 
author knows a Kansas City business man whose hobby 
has lain in such lines, and who has taught himself to make 
just such stone arrowpoints, even to specimens that might 
make not only a Pottawatomie, but even Longfellow's 
poetically described "Arrow-Maker," envious indeed. 

The first step was the selection of a stone of a suitable 
kind and of considerable size. This was buried in wet 
earth and a fire built over it, with the result that all 
cracks or checks were shown, defects indicated, and its 
breaking up into proper fragments facilitated. From the 
stone thus treated flakes were then knocked off by using 
other stones as hammers, until the original block had 
been converted into as many likely pieces as possible. 

[40] 



I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The arrowhead-maker next covered each hand with a 
rawhide protector or pad, and holding a flint in this skin 
pad over his left palm, pressed the point of a bone or 
deer's horn tool hard against the edge of the chip so as 
to flake off one tiny piece after another, continuing the 
process until the completed arrowhead was shaped to his 
liking. The delicate parts of the process were the forma- 
tion of the cutting-edges and especially the tapering point, 
where care was required to avoid breaking the slender 
stone. There is a large variety in the finished products 
of this labor, some points being thick and clumsy and 
others skilfully executed until little thicker than cardboard 
and almost transparent. Varying sizes and shapes were 
made, according to the kind and size of game for which 
they were intended, whether for large animals like the 
buffalo, bear, elk, or deer, or for small animals and birds. 
Spearheads, up to a foot or more in length, were common, 
as were similar flints designed for use as daggers, as knives 
for hunting or domestic use, and the like. Mr. George 
Bird Grinnell, in his Story of the Indian, in describing the 
occasional perfection of these productions, mentions hav- 
ing seen a perfect dagger, eight inches in length, chipped 
in this way from a piece of a glass bottle. The common 
flint stones of the Middle West furnished the material 
for the great majority of these points as most often seen. 
Other favorite materials were the milky chalcedony of 
the Rocky Mountains, or, finest of all, the wonderful 
black glasslike obsidian, as from the cliff known as the 
"Mountain of Glass" in the Yellowstone Park. These 
stones for this purpose were objects of trade and barter 
between the various Indian tribes. Not a few points for 

[41] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

spears and arrows, made of the last-mentioned distantly 
procured material have been found near Lake Geneva. 
The writer found one such, its edges as sharp as ever, 
along the well-known shore path which was originally 
the old Indian trail along the north shore of the Lake; 
and a broad and sharp spearhead of the same agatelike 
substance has been found in a plowed field near Lake 
Como. In the early days of the fur trade, arrowheads of 
iron were largely sold by the trading posts, some of which 
were stamped with the maker's or the trader's name. 
These were eagerly bought by the Indians before their 
use of guns superseded the bow, as in lightness, uniformity, 
and sharpness they were greatly superior to the stone 
article, and being cheap they obviated the time and labor 
required for the slow production of the native handmade 
head. The writer has seen these, found in South Dakota, 
stamped "P. Choteau," the name of one of the famous 
early French traders of St. Louis, but as a rule these iron 
points are rarely found, as when lost they were soon des- 
troyed by rust. 

The shafts to which arrowheads were fastened were 
commonly made of year-old growths of the dogwood or 
the wild cherry, selected as being slender, straight, strong, 
and heavy. The wood was chosen, cut, dried, seasoned, 
and straightened with much care, scraped as smooth as 
possible, and the stone point fastened in a notch by means 
of fine sinew, put on wet and allowed to dry, as it would, 
extremely tight. By some tribes they were further 
fastened by glue made from the hoofs of animals. 

The bow of the American Indian, as everywhere that 
it formed the universal weapon of Stone Age hunting or 

[42] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

warfare, was essentially a short-range arm. At its best 
and in the hands of the most skilled archers capable of a 
flight of 300 or 400 yards, and occasionally shot with 
an accuracy that could hit a half-dollar at 100 feet or more, 
it yet demanded a short range and the utmost possible 
power that could be given to it to force its rough stone 
arrowpoint through the tough hide of any of the larger 
animals. The ofttold tales of the western Indians 
shooting their arrows entirely through the bodies of 
buffalo describe feats only possible when the mounted 
hunter forced his horse close beside the hunted animal. 
Thus it was that the Indian's hunting-methods and his 
success therein consisted largely in lying in ambush 
beside the game trail or stalking noiselessly and undetected 
into the closest possible proximity of his intended quarry, 
and these were the circumstances that forced him to 
develop and to practice continually that alertness, skill, 
and stealth in woodcraft for which he was famous. 

Other stone implements not infrequently found in the 
Lake Geneva neighborhood are stones roughly arrow- 
shaped but blunter at the point, which were attached to 
short wood or deer-antler handles and used by the squaws 
in scraping the flesh from the skins which it was their 
endless task to prepare for preservation and use. Others 
are stone axes or hammers, mauls, and the like, made of 
softer stones ground to a semi-edge and grooved for a 
wooden handle fastened with rawhide. Still others are 
larger stones, conveniently hollowed by Nature or man, 
and used as mortars for grinding corn and the like. In 
recent years these have been found on the Hutchinson 
estate on the north shore of the Lake and on the west 

[43] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

beach of Conference Point. On the property of Mr. 
Mark Healy, on the western shore of Williams Bay, there 
was recently found a perfect specimen of an Indian fire- 
stone, used in making fire before the advent of the 
early white man's flint-and-steel or other methods. The 
aboriginal method consisted in the rapid revolution of an 
upright stick of hardwood in a small hollow made in 
a piece of wood used as a base, the resulting friction 
presently igniting the fine, dry, tinder or "punk" with 
which the hollow was filled. The upright "drill," as it 
has been commonly called, was held in place, additionally 
weighted down, and the holding hand protected, by a 
stone held in the left hand. In the underside of this 
stone there was a hollow, a small cuplike or thimble-like 
depression, in which the top of the drill stick was placed, 
when it was pressed down, to increase the friction, as the 
drill was rapidly revolved by a bow-and-cord device 
operated by the right hand. The stone mentioned had 
been used for this purpose for so long a time that its 
surfaces are obviously worn by the gripping fingers and 
thumbs of the left hands of its aboriginal users. Such 
simple and crude, but, to their owners, valuable imple- 
ments of domestic life were often carefully kept and 
handed down from generation to generation. 

By the time of the coming of the white man to the 
shores of Lake Geneva the use of all these primitive 
weapons of the hunt and the warpath, as also of domestic 
life and use, was fast passing away before the superior 
efi^ectiveness of articles procurable from the trading posts, 
for often, perhaps always, an exorbitant price in furs and 
skins. Guns and ammunition had largely supplanted the 

[44] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

use of the bow. The knives, axes, hatchets, kettles, 
ornaments, clothing, and other articles from the traders' 
stocks, were similarly displacing the ingeniously con- 
trived and skilfully designed material of the earlier days 
of Indian economic and social conditions. Even vil- 
lages which the white man had never visited, or where 
the itinerant trader's pack had never been opened before 
the dazzled eyes of old and young alike, were yet not 
without many of these articles, procured by long trips 
to the posts or other settlements or by trade with other 
tribes nearer the source of supply of the coveted posses- 
sions. As such writers as Mr. Quaife have pointed out, 
the disintegration of the old Indian social regime began 
with the coming of the traders, for whose wonderful 
offerings, as they were to Indian eyes and minds, the red 
man would barter away all that he had, even to his 
winter's supply of food, often suffering the pangs of semi- 
starvation as a result of this childlike recklessness and 
extravagance. 

Interestingly enough, here and there among the Indians 
during their contact with the vanguard or even the later 
advance tide of civilization, there were individuals who 
scorned all the white man's advances and all his ways 
and even all his offered goods, preferring to retain un- 
changed the customs, the manners, and even the imple- 
ments of the days and ways of their ancestors. The most 
remarkable and widespread instance of this attitude was 
that accompanying the preaching, in 1805 to 18 10, by 
the brother of Tecumseh, commonly spoken of as the 
"Shawnee Prophet," of a movement to avoid all contact 
with and contamination by the white man and his ways. 

[45] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Of this remarkable Indian campaign of "reform" in the 
hope of averting the all-too-evident likelihood of ruin of 
the red race, Mr. Quaife says: 

The extent to which this advice was followed is astonishing, in 
view of the fact that it necessitated a complete revolution in the 
lives and habits of the natives. The influence of the Prophet's reli- 
gious teachings was felt from Florida to Saskatchewan. Most mar- 
velous of all, the love of liquor which had been the bane of the Indians 
from the beginning of their intercourse with the whites was for a time 
completely exorcised. In 1807 among the Ottawas the whiskey and 
rum of the traders had become a drug on the market, not a gallon a 
month being purchased. 

Unfortunately for the Indian, the sway of savage passions, 
the traders' schemes, and the inevitable westward move- 
ment of civilization could not be indefinitely held in check, 
and the succumbing of the tribes under the joint forces of 
destruction was but briefly checked. 

To the last, however, perhaps even today, there 
survived something of the same spirit in an occasional 
devotee of the "good old days." As late as about 191 5 
there lived on one of the reservations of Wisconsin an 
aged recluse who dwelt apart from the rest of his people, 
refusing to share what he considered their degradation 
by the adoption of the manners, houses, garb, and tools 
of the white man. Around his bark lodge, built in the 
ancient style, he hunted with bow and arrow, scorning to 
touch the modern firearms which perhaps every other 
man on the reservation owned or longed to possess. To 
Dr. S. A. Barrett, of the Milwaukee Public Museum, he 
refused to divulge the store of native tales, legendary 
history, and primitive customs with which he was known 

[46] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

to be familiar, stating that he would impart these only 
to whatever white man would make him a present of such 
a flintlock gun as he remembered having been the chief 
treasure of his father and himself in his own youth. 
Not least of the perhaps inevitable sadnesses of the passing 
of the primitive races of America has been the fact that 
among them have been those who appreciated the simpli- 
city and the best characteristics of their own unspoiled 
native ways and days, and have mourned the passing of 
those qualities of the red man which, by any standard 
of human thought, were not without a certain nobility. 

Sadder still, everywhere that the trader went, and even 
in advance of his actual arrival, there traveled the curse 
which more than anything else proved the eventual ruin 
of the Indian, the early adventurer's kegs of French 
brandy, or their successors, the American frontiersman's 
whiskey barrels. From the reckless dissipations of the 
renegade Enghsh adventurers of "Merry Mount" in the 
New England Puritan days, to the Winnebago and the 
Black Hawk wars, the tale was ever the same. More 
than one far-seeing Indian chief, even an occasional 
tribal council, had begged the white man to keep away 
from their people the temptation that none of them 
could resist, sometimes the very speakers themselves 
pleading their own acknowledged helplessness before its 
seductions and its ruin. But scruples of conscience were 
few on the frontier, and whiskey brought in many furs 
readily convertible into gold in the eastern markets, and 
the deadly work went on. At the treaty council held 
with the Pottawatomie at Chicago in August, 1821, 
within twenty-four hours after the accompanying issue 

[47] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

of whiskey not less than ten murders took place among 
the assembled tribesmen. 

The red man was but a savage, it is true, with all that 
savagery has manifested the world around, whether beside 
Lake Geneva or the Congo, in the way of resentment of 
the entrance of civilization upon its domain. But the 
saddest tragedy of history is that the first contacts of 
superior with inferior races, which, had these been guided 
by wisdom, firmness, justice, and kindness, might have 
been all but invariably a blessing to both, have instead 
been all but invariably the ruin of the weaker. 



1 



[48] 



CHAPTER III 
THE COMING OF THE WHITE MAN 

Frontiersmen make much history but write little. 
Many of what would be to posterity the absorbingly 
interesting details of the first glimpse or the first settle- 
ments of places later famous, their moving causes and 
accompanying circumstances, have been lost in obscurity 
through the illiteracy of their humble discoverers, or 
because the minds of those pioneers had in view only 
their immediate goals or gains and never dreamed of 
what generations to follow them would yet make of 
those hitherto unvisited regions. 

Such has been the fate of much that we of today would 
delight in knowing about the first white men to visit the 
body of water that presently received the name of Lake 
Geneva. No cairn marks the spot whence the first 
trader or trapper glimpsed its blue waters and green- 
clad hills. The very identity of the first visitor from the 
nearest American or Canadian frontier semi-civilization 
is unknown. We know that long before 1830 the exist- 
ence and approximate location of the Lake was known to 
the few white inhabitants of northeastern Illinois and 
southeastern Wisconsin, these having learned of it from 
the Indians. Records of the twenties tell of discussions 
of it among the traders, trappers, and voyageurs at 
Solomon Juneau's trading post at Milwaukee, while at 
the same time it was heard of by the soldiers, the few 
white civilians, and occasional visitors, at old Fort 
Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago River. Solomon 

[49] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Juneau himself said that John Brink, the surveyor, was 
the first white man to see the Lake, alluding to his first 
visit in 1833. We know, however, as Juneau undoubt- 
edly did not, that two years before that date a party of 
white men and women had gazed with delight upon its 
beauty and had visited one of the Indian villages upon its 
shores. Brink, who also seems not to have known of 
this visit of the Kinzie party, of which we shall hear at 
length, replied to Juneau that he was not the first white 
man to reach the Lake, as a Frenchman had preceded 
him — doubtless some wandering fur trader from Green 
Bay. 

But how did it happen that the immediate neighbor- 
hood of the Lake remained unvisited by the white man 
through not less than a century and a half during which 
the soil of Wisconsin was continually crossed and 
recrossed by explorers, missionaries, traders, and mili- 
tary expeditions, and early settlements of hardy souls had 
sprung up at many points throughout its area ? A glance 
at the map of Wisconsin, together with the recollection 
of the fact that practically all the early travel through 
the central portion of the North American continent was 
by water, will answer the question. Two routes were 
chiefly followed: one via Green Bay, Lake Winnebago, 
and the Fox River, crossing to the Wisconsin where the 
city of Portage now stands, and so to the Mississippi, 
whose branching tributaries conducted white and red 
men alike to their respective goals of peace or war. The 
second was by way of Lake Michigan's expanse to its 
southern shore, whence various well-known portages and 
trails led to streams by which again were accessible 

[50] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

practically all points in the whole Mississippi Valley. 
La Salle was probably at the future site of Chicago in 
1671. The expedition of Joliet and Marquette was 
almost certainly there in 1673, returning from their long 
tour of exploration via the Fox-Wisconsin-Mississippi 
route, when they heard of the possibility of regaining 
Mackinac by going up the Illinois River and thence to 
Lake Michigan, a course which they followed. From 
this time on, these two routes from the northern Great 
Lakes to the central west, the Mississippi Valley, to the 
Missouri, and even to the Gulf, were never without their 
expeditions of the white men, for purposes of trade, of 
military establishment, of settlement, or during the rival- 
ries, conflicts, and campaigns of the Revolution and the 
War of 1 812. Yet for 150 years the beautiful body of 
water that we know as Lake Geneva remained, so far as 
we definitely know, unvisited by any of the ever in- 
creasing numbers of white men. Lying between the 
mentioned waterways of traffic, this triangle of south- 
eastern Wisconsin, formed by the Fox- Wisconsin route, 
Lake Michigan, and the Illinois line, remained an 
almost unknown earthly paradise of richness and beauty 
until the progress of events brought it to the knowledge 
of the spreading spirit of westward settlement, when 
within two decades it became first the goal and then the 
home of thousands who learned of its attractions. 

The first authentic visit of the whites to the Lake is 
one of which there exists a most interesting and striking 
description, from the vivid pen of the wife of the head 
of the party, who was herself present on the historic 
occasion. 

[511 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

This young woman, hardly more than a girl bride at 
the time, was Mrs. John H. Kinzie, without an apprecia- 
tive mention of whom and of whose rare qualities in that 
frontier day no mention of the early history of Lake 
Geneva is complete. 

Her husband was the United States sub-Indian Agent 
at Fort Winnebago, on the Wisconsin River, now the 
site of the city of Portage. A man of no small experience 
and culture for his circumstances, he was born in the 
tiny frontier settlement beside the stockaded walls of 
Fort Dearborn. His father, John Kinzie, a Canadian 
by birth, came to the United States, eventually became 
an American citizen, and in 1804, at the age of forty-one, 
opened his trading post beside the fort at the mouth of 
the Chicago River. Here he and his family were for 
many years the best-known and most influential white 
residents aside from the military garrison. He had had 
the advantages of a good education and of not a little 
travel in his early years, having lived in New York, 
Quebec, Detroit, and at several of the principal frontier 
settlements. As a boy in Quebec he had learned enough 
of the trade of a silversmith to enable him to make the 
silver ornaments which were among the principal articles 
of the trade with the Indians. Of an adventurous dis- 
position from his youth, he loved the life on the edge 
of the westward-moving American civilization, and early 
entered the trade with the western Indians, having had 
establishments at Sandusky and Maumee, Ohio, and at 
St. Joseph, Michigan, before his final settlement at 
Chicago. In 1798 he married a Mrs. Eleanor McKillip, 
the widow of a Detroit militia officer who had been killed 

[52] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

in the British Indian service, and six years later purchased 
the small store which a French half-breed named Le Mai 
had established at Fort Dearborn. 

Throughout his entire life and in all his business 
dealings he seems not only to have exhibited traits of 
courage and of financial enterprise, but also to have been 
widely deemed an honest man and one whose "word was 
as good as his bond." He was respected accordingly by 
the whites, among whom in that day such a standing as 
his was none too common on the frontier. Most of all 
was he held in high esteem by the Indians, who so often 
received scant justice — and perhaps as often downright 
cheating — in their dealings with white traders. In Mr. 
Kinzie's case his established reputation for fair dealing 
and friendliness toward the Indians was richly rewarded 
on the occasion of the Fort Dearborn massacre of August 
15, 1 8 12, when he and his family and their household 
attaches were rescued by his red-men friends from the 
terrible fate that overtook so many in the horrors of 
that fight and the subsequent murders. 

The son, John H., was one of the children saved on 
this occasion, and grew up to become, as mentioned, sub- 
Indian Agent on behalf of the government at Fort 
Winnebago. His standing among the Indians is hand- 
somely illustrated by the fact that by many of them he 
was always known as "Shawneeawkee," or their "friend." 
In August of 1830 he married at Detroit the brilliant 
and accomplished young woman who twenty years later 
wrote a most vivid and fascinating account of her memo- 
ries of life in Wisconsin in the thirties, in her well- 
known book, Wau Bun, the Early Day in the Northwest. 

[S3\ 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

As, like all other writers on not only the early history 
of Lake Geneva, but indeed of the whole Chicago neigh- 
borhood, we shall have occasion to quote at length from 
this remarkable and much-discussed work, it is perhaps 
but just to admit that as far as many of its statements 
are concerned, it is far more the product of a descriptive 
writer, and of a reminiscent and imaginative mind, than 
of an exact and painstaking historian. Written more 
than two decades after the events with which it deals, 
it obviously perceives some of these in a more glamorous 
perspective than in the vivid and accurate light of the 
hour of their occurrence. The student who searches its 
pages for contemporary corroboration of reported events 
may find that many of its statements will hardly stand 
the acid tests of literal reality. It is certainly more the 
work of an impressionistic than of a realistic artist, its 
pictures drawn with the brush of a Corot or an Innes 
rather than after the style of a Meissonnier or a Detaille. 
Yet for our purposes of retelling the story of Lake 
Geneva, it is none the less valuable. If its writer 
indulges, as we shall see, in rhapsodies on the first 
recorded view by white men and women of the azure 
waters and emerald hills of the Lake, and is moved by 
the sounds characteristic of the forest at dawn to quote 
Paradise Lost^ we are none the poorer for its illustration 
of the fact that the surroundings of the Lake have ever 
made the deepest possible appeal to the mind open to 
aesthetic impressions, throughout the now almost com- 
plete century of civilization's abode upon its shores. 

In the early spring of 1831, in company with her 
husband, Mrs. Kinzie visited his family in their home at 

[54] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Chicago, traveling overland on horseback from Fort 
Winnebago by way of Dixon, Illinois. What with bad 
weather, roads that were little better than Indian trails 
or seas of bottomless mud, and the necessity of fording 
rushing and ice-filled streams, it was a hard trip, yet 
typical of what was common at the time of year in the 
Middle West. Among the dozen log cabins which stood 
beside the palisades of Fort Dearborn rose the consider- 
able establishment of the Kinzie "mansion," or Agency 
House, with its out-buildings, barns, dairy, bakehouse, 
lodgings for the French employees, and with large, well- 
cultivated gardens surrounding the whole. The visitors 
remained two months with Mr. Kinzie's mother, sisters, 
and brother until, it being made known that the gov- 
ernment had decided to remove the garrison to Fort 
Howard at Green Bay, the Kinzie family decided to 
move to Fort Winnebago for their future home. It was 
in the course of this trip that they made the first known 
visit of white people to the shores of Lake Geneva. 

The party consisted of Mr. Kinzie and his wife; his 
mother, Mrs. John Kinzie; a sister, Mrs. L. T. Helm; 
her little boy, Edwin; two French employees, Petaille 
Gringnon and Simon Lecuyer; a young half-breed 
"bound-girl," Josette Ouilmette, the daughter of a 
Frenchman and his Pottawatomie squaw (the father's 
name being perpetuated today in that of Wilmette, the 
northern suburb of Chicago); and a negro boy, Harry, 
formerly a slave but now, on Illinois becoming "free 
territory," the legal ward of Mr. Kinzie. The men and 
the younger Mrs. Kinzie and Mrs. Helm traveled on 
horseback, the others riding in a light ''dearborn wagon," 

[55] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

lately brought from Detroit, "the first luxury of the 
kind ever seen on the prairie," as Mrs. Kinzie describes 
it. Though it was only the late spring of the year, yet 
"the burning effect of the sun and prairie winds" on a 
long trip overland in the month of May was regarded 
by the women of the party as so severe that they equipped 
themselves with masks of brown linen, tied under the 
chin and around the head and with openings for eyes, 
nose, and mouth, and in this guise they made the trip, 
their resultant appearance, as Mrs. Kinzie narrates, being 
the source of astounded surprise and even superstitious 
terror to not a few of the Indians they encountered 
en route. 

The first night the party stopped at Dunkley's Grove, 
the second at Crystal Lake. The second day of the trip 
was marred by an accident in crossing the Fox River, 
when the team pulling the wagon became mired in mid- 
stream and broke the pole of the wagon in their struggles, 
frightening its occupants almost to the fainting-point 
and necessitating fashioning a new wagon tongue from 
a tree of convenient size. On the late afternoon of the 
third day the party overtook a detachment of soldiers 
from the Fort who had preceded them with a drove of 
cattle and horses for Fort Howard. 

Shortly after noon of the fourth day of the trip the 
party caught sight of Lake Geneva — the first known 
glimpse of its waters by white people, so far as we have 
definite knowledge. At the same time it is evident from 
the way the Lake is spoken of by Mrs. Kinzie as one of 
their intended stopping-places, that its existence and 
location were definitely known to them, and must have 

m 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

been to others of the time. Her striking description of 
the arrival of the party in sight of the Lake is at once so 
vivid and so illustrative of the impression which its 
appearance has never failed to make upon all interested 
and appreciative visitors that it deserves to be quoted 
almost in full. 

Describing their approach through the beautiful 
country that is now McHenry County, Illinois, she wrote: 

We shaped our course more to the north, in the direction of Big 
Foot Lake, now [i.e., in 1856, when the account was written] known 
by the appellation, Lalce Geneva. 

The air was balmy, the foliage fresh and fragrant, the little brooks 
clear and sparkling — everything in nature spoke the praises of the 
beneficent Creator. 

It is in scenes like this, far removed from the bustle, the strife, 
and the sin of civilized life, that we most fully realize the presence of 
the great Author of the Universe. Here can the mind most fully 
adore His majesty and goodness, for here only is the command obeyed, 
"Let all the earth keep silence before Him!" 

It cannot escape observation that the deepest and most solemn 
devotion is in the hearts of those who, shut out from the worship of 
God in temples made with hands, are led to commune with Him amid 
the boundless magnificence that His own power has framed 

We now found ourselves in a more diversified country than any 
we had hitherto travelled. Gently swelling hills, and lovely valleys, 
and bright sparkling streams were a feature of the landscape. Now 
and then a shout from the leader of our party (for, according to custom, 
we travelled Indian file\ would call our attention to a herd of deer 
"loping," as the westerners say, through the forest. But the game 
invariably contrived to disappear before we could reach it, and it was 
out of the question to leave the beaten track for a regular hunt. 

Soon after mid-day, we descended a long, sloping knoll, and by 
a sudden turn came in full view of the beautiful sheet of water denomi- 
nated "Gros-pied" by the French, " Maunk-suck " by the natives, 

[57] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and by ourselves, "Big-Foot," from the chief, whose village over- 
looked its waters. Bold, swelling hills jutted forward into the clear 
blue expanse, or retreated slightly to afford a green, level nook, as a 
resting-place for the foot of man. On the nearer shore stretched a 
bright, gravelly beach, through which coursed here and there a pure, 
sparkling rivulet to join the larger sheet of water. 

On the rising ground, at the foot of one of the bold bluffs in the 
middle distance, a collection of neat wigwams formed, with their 
surrounding gardens, no unpleasant feature in the picture. 

A shout of delight burst involuntarily from the whole party, as 
this charming landscape met our view. It was like the Hudson, only 
less bold — no, it was like the lake of the Forest Cantons, in the picture 
of the Chapel of William Tell ! What could be imagined more enchant- 
ing! Oh, if our friends at the east could but enjoy it with us! 

We paused long to admire, then spurred on, skirting the head of 
the lake, and were soon ascending the broad platform, on which stood 
the village of Maunk-suck, or Big Foot. 

The inhabitants, who had witnessed our approach from a distance, 
were all assembled in front of their wigwams to greet us, if friends — 
if otherwise, whatever the occasion should demand. It was the first 
time such a spectacle had ever presented itself to their wondering 
eyes. Their salutations were not less cordial than we expected. 
"Shaw-nee-aw-kee"^ and his mother, who was known throughout 
the tribe by the touching appellation of "Our friend's wife," were 
welcomed most kindly, and an animated conversation commenced, 
which I could understand only as far as it was conveyed by gestures — 
so I amused myself by taking a minute survey of all that met my view. 

The chief was a large, raw-boned, ugly Indian, with a countenance 
bloated by intemperance, and with a sinister, unpleasant expression. 
He had a gay-colored handkerchief upon his head, and was otherwise 
attired in his best, in compliment to the strangers. 

It was to this chief that Chambley, or as he is now called, Shaw- 
bee-nay, Billy Caldwell and Robinson were despatched, during the 

' By this name, expressive of intimate friendship, the Pottawatomies always called 
Mr. Kinzie, Sr., as has been mentioned. On this occasion the Lake Geneva members 
of the tribe evidently applied it to his son as well, quite in conformity with Indian 
custom, 

[58] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Winnebago war in 1827, to use their earnest endeavors to prevent 
him and his band from joining the hostile Indians. With some 
difficulty they succeeded, and were thus the means, doubtless, of 
saving the lives of all the settlers who lived exposed upon the 
frontiers. 

Among the various groups of his people, there was none attracted 
my attention so forcibly as a young man of handsome face, and a 
figure that was striking, even where all were fine and symmetrical. 
He too had a gay handkerchief on his head, a shirt of the brightest 
lemon-colored calico, an abundance of silver ornaments, and, what 
gave his dress a most fanciful appearance, one leggin of blue, the other 
of bright scarlet. I was not ignorant that this peculiar feature in 
his toilet indicated a heart suffering from the tender passion. The 
flute, which he carried in his hand, added confirmation to the fact, 
while the joyous, animated expression of his countenance showed with 
equal plainness that he was not a despairing lover. 

I could have imagined him to have recently returned from the 
chase, laden with booty, with which he had, as is the custom, entered 
the lodge of the fair one, and throwing his burden at the feet of her 
parents, with an indifferent, superb sort of air, as much as to say, 
"Here is some meat — it is a mere trifle, but it will show you what 
you might expect with me for a son-in-law." I could not doubt 
that the damsel had stepped forward and gathered it up, in token 
that she accepted the offering, and the donor along with it. There 
was nothing in the appearance or manner of any of the maidens by 
whom we were surrounded, to denote which was the happy fair, 
neither, although I peered anxiously into all their countenances, could 
I detect any blush of consciousness, so I was obliged to content myself 
with selecting the youngest and prettiest of the group, and go on 
weaving my romance to my own satisfaction. 

The village stood encircled by an amphitheatre of hills, so precip- 
itous, and with gorges so steep and narrow, that it seemed almost 
impossible to scale them, even on horseback — how then could we hope 
to accomplish the ascent of the four-wheeled carriage? This was the 
point now under discussion between my husband and the Pottawat- 
omies. There was no choice but to make the effort, selecting the 

[59I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

pass that the inhabitants pointed out as the most practicable. Petaille 
went first, and I followed on my favorite Jerry. It was such a scramble 
as is not often taken. Almost perpendicularly, through what seemed 
the dry bed of a torrent, now filled with loose stones, and scarcely 
affording one secure foothold from the bottom to the summit! I 
clung fast to the mane, hterally at times clasping Jerry about his 
neck, and amid the encouraging shouts and cheers of those below, we 
at length arrived safely, though nearly breathless on the pinnacle, 
and sat looking down to view the success of the next party. 

The horses had been taken from the carriage, and the luggage it 
contained placed upon the shoulders of some of the young Indians, to 
be toted up the steep. Ropes were now attached to its sides, and a 
regular bevy of our red friends, headed by our two Frenchmen, placed 
to man them. Two or three more took their places in the rear, to 
hold the vehicle and keep it from slipping backward — then the labour 
commenced. Such a pulling! such a shouting! such a clapping of 
hands by the spectators of both sexes! such a stentorian word of 
command or encouragement from the bourgeois! Now and then 
there would be a slight halt, a wavering, as if carriage and men were 
about to tumble backwards into the plain below — but no — they 
recovered themselves, and after incredible efforts they, too, safely 
gained the table land above. In process of time all were landed there, 
and having remunerated our friends to their satisfaction, the goods and 
chattels were collected, the wagon repacked, and we set off for our 
encampment at Turtle Creek. 

The exertions and excitement of our laborious ascent, together with 
the increasing heat of the sun, made this afternoon's ride more uncom- 
fortable than anything we had previously felt. We were truly rejoiced 
when the "whoops" of our guide, and the sight of a few scattered 
lodges, gave notice that we had reached our camping ground. We 
chose a beautiful sequestered spot, by the side of a clear, sparkling 
stream, and having dismounted, and seen that our horses were made 
comfortable, my husband, after giving his directions to his men, led 
me to a retired spot where I could lay aside my hat and mask, and 
bathe my flushed face and aching head in the cool, refreshing waters. 
Never had I felt anything so grateful, so delicious. I sat down, and 

[60] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

leaned my head against one of the tall, overshadowing trees, and was 
almost dreaming, when called to partake of our evening meal. 

The Indians had brought us, as a present, some fine brook trout, 
which our Frenchmen had prepared in the most tempting fashion, and 
before the bright moon rose and we were ready for our rest, all head- 
ache and fatigue had alike disappeared. 

One of the most charming features of this mode of travelling is the 
joyous, vocal life of the forest at early dawn, when all the feathered 
tribe come forth to pay their cheerful salutations to the opening day. 

The rapid, chattering flourish of the bob-'o-link, the soft whistle of 
the thrush, the tender coo of the wood dove, the deep warbling bass of 
the grouse, the drumming of the partridge, the melodious trill of the 
lark, the gay carol of the robin, the friendly, familiar call of the duck 
and the teal, resound from tree and knoll, and lowland, promoting the 
expressive exclamation of the half-breed, "Voila la foret qui parle!" 
It seems as if man must involuntarily raise his voice, to take part in 
the general chorus — the matin song of praise. 

Birds and flowers, and the soft balmy airs of morning! Must it 
not have been in a scene like this that Milton poured out his beautiful 
hymn of adoration, 

"These are Thy glorious works, Parent of Good!" 

What more vivid, realistic, and striking description 
of the first recorded visit of white men and women to 
the shores of Lake Geneva, and of the impression made 
on them by its natural surroundings and unique beauty, 
could its most ardent admirer ask than these remarkable 
words from the sensitive appreciation and the gifted 
pen of the first white woman to look upon its hills and 
waters ? 

Much interesting information is given us, directly and 
indirectly, in Mrs. Kinzie's words. The approach of the 
party to the Lake, and the first glimpse of its waters, 
must have been from the hills behind the resort of Glen- 

[6i] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

wood Springs, whence they descended to where the road 
skirts the beach at the west end of the Lake, as the 
Indian trail passed between the water and the swamp 
at that point. Big Foot's village stood on the natural 
"platform," as the elevation is called, the rising ground 
at Buena Vista Park and vicinity, on both sides of the 
road where it turns westward from the lake shore. The 
"pass that the inhabitants pointed out as the most 
practicable" from the shore to the summit of the sur- 
rounding bluffs, must have been the natural ravine now 
used by the Delavan Lake-Fontana Road, beside which 
lies the creek, called by Mrs. Kinzie, "the dry bed of 
a torrent, filled with loose stones." The level ground 
above is some i8o feet above the Lake below. On 
accomplishing the ascent of their wagon and freight, 
the party struck northwestward to their next encamp- 
ment on Turtle Creek, probably passing near where 
Darien now stands, as they were following the trail 
to Lake Koshkonong. They neither visited, saw, nor 
mention Delavan Lake, though their route must have 
taken them not more than a couple of miles, at most, 
from its southern shore. ^ 

' For many years there has existed a popular error as to the year in which the 
visit of the Kinzie family to Lake Geneva occurred. This has been due chiefly to the 
fact that Mr. James Simmons' Annals of Lake Geneva states that it took place in 1832. 
Mrs. Elizabeth Therese Baird, in her Recollections of Early Wisconsin, gives 1833 as 
the year. Both of these statements are, however, erroneous. Mrs. Kinzie's narrative 
says that, having been married in 1830, the trip which she describes in such detail took 
place the next spring. The movement of troops from Fort Dearborn to Fort Howard, 
which took place simultaneously with the journey, was in 1831. Moreover, the year 
1832 was that of the Black Hawk War, and Mrs. Kinzie states that she was living at 
Fort Winnebago when the first news of the outbreak reached there, in the month of 
April. The first authentic visit of white people to Lake Geneva is thus seen to have 
occurred a year earlier than has been the heretofore commonly accepted impression. 

[62] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The description thus given of Lake Geneva in 1831 
is not only the first known occasion of its visitation by 
the whites, but is one of only three extant accounts of 
its appearance in those days, as well as. of the location, 
inhabitants, and life of Big Foot's village during its 
Indian occupancy, which terminated five years later. 

The next known visit of a white man to the Lake was 
by the frontier surveyor, John Brink, who in 1833, on a 
trip from Fort Winnebago to the Illinois line, retraced 
the route of the Kinzie party and for the first time saw 
the waters in connection with which his name will long 
be remembered. His mention of a "tree burial," near 
the village, and a description of the Indian lodges by a 
visiting missionary in 1836, are given in our chapter on 
the Indians of Lake Geneva. 

Two years later, about September i, 1835, Brink 
again came on the scene, this time at the foot of the Lake, 
and in a way destined to have a most important and 
permanent effect on the future of the neighborhood. The 
territory being about to be opened for settlement, he took 
a government subcontract to survey and mark township 
and section lines through this and other parts of the 
then Territory, beginning at Beloit and working east- 
ward. With three assistants he camped for a day at 
the Geneva end of the Lake to examine the water power 
afforded by the overflow of the Lake into the White 
River. 

A native of Geneva, New York, the appearance of 
Big Foot Lake reminded Brink of the scenes of his early 
home, and feeling, with sentiment as commendable as 
unusual in a young frontiersman, that the beauty of this 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

little-known body of water deserved a better appella- 
tion than the uncouth title by which it was known up 
to that time, he decided to call it Lake Geneva, and so 
entered it on his maps and reports, thus giving it the 
beautiful and appropriate name by which it has been 
known ever since. 

His second step was to claim the mentioned possible 
water power formed by the drainage of the Lake, 
making a "claim" to the land in the vicinity by follow- 
ing the custom of the day in cutting down a few trees 
and marking his name and the word "claim" on another, 
on the land now the site of the Hotel Geneva. That he 
performed these required and customary acts by way 
of establishing his title to the indicated ground was his 
life-long assertion, up to his death at Crystal Lake, 
Illinois, in the nineties, at well above eighty years of 
age. In February of 1836 Brink's surveying compan- 
ions returned to the Lake and began preparations for 
residence there. Their operations were interrupted by 
occasional absences to procure supplies from Milwaukee, 
40 miles distant "as the crow flies." Of fish and game 
the Lake and its surrounding country supplied these 
pioneers, as their early successors, with every abundance. 

During the same month there came to the spot 
another noted character in the early history of the Lake, 
one Christopher Payne, a typical frontiersman. A 
Pennsylvanian by birth, he had spent his fifty years in 
keeping ever just ahead of the westward-moving con- 
quest of the continent. The virgin forests of Penn- 
sylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had seen successive 
residences on his part, and he had been in turn hunter, 

[64] 



THE B OOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

farmer, soldier, Indian fighter, and miner. During the 
Black Hawk War he and his family had left his squatter's 
clearing near Naperville, Illinois, to take refuge under 
the bastions of Fort Dearborn. There a half-breed 
Indian trader had given him, in March, 1832, a descrip- 
tion of "Big Foot Lake," and indicated on a rude map 
its location, that of the neighboring Lake Como, and 
something of the surrounding country. Soon after, with 
several companions, he had tried to find it, but without 
success, and located instead at what is now Belvidere, 
Illinois, where he built the first house and turned the 
first sod on the prairie. Almost four years later, in 
February, 1836, with two companions, he made a second 
expedition in search of the Lake, the trio traveling on 
foot and carrying five days' rations in knapsacks. 

On the evening of their second day's tramp they 
found the foot of the Lake, remained two days, and, as 
Payne always claimed, walked around both Geneva and 
Como, looking for any indications of previous settlers or 
claimants and finding none. They made their own 
"claim" accordingly, by cutting down and markmg 
trees, and returned the next month to build a small 
log cabin near the present mill race in the town of 
Geneva. This occurred during the absence of Brink's 
partners, and the two claims covered the same ground 
and the coveted water power. 

Brink's companions returned in April to find Payne m 
possession and refusing to move. The subsequent strife 
was typical of a thousand similar frontier quarrels be- 
tween rival claimants to desirable sites. Each side sought 
reinforcements in the form of sympathizers with the 

[65] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

alleged justice of his claims. Several fights occurred 
between these parties, fortunately without recourse to 
firearms. Payne began the framework of a dam, but it 
was burned at night by his opponents. On another 
occasion, having gone to a neighbor's without the 
rifle he ordinarily carried, he was kidnapped by his 
rivals and deported to some distance, but returned. 
After five months of bickerings and threats, Payne's party 
having been materially increased by accessions of would- 
be settlers and their famihes, the matter was settled in 
the month of July by a payment to Brink's partners of 
^2,000 in cash and goods, including some wagons and 
teams, and Payne and his followers remained in posses- 
sion. He then erected a mill, which he later sold, with 
his share of the original claim, and built a second 
mill at the outlet of Lake Como, at a point east of 
the present Lake Geneva-Elkhorn Road. This he oper- 
ated successfully for seven years, finally selling it to 
other parties. After various local troubles and suc- 
cesses, which have nothing to do with this history, 
he moved near the town of Scott, in Columbia County, 
Wisconsin, where he died in 1871, at the age of eighty- 
five years. Many an early frontier document bore his 
curious "signature," for, being illiterate, he was accus- 
tomed to "make his mark" by a jab or stab of the pen 
completely through the paper, a trait that was long 
remembered of him. 

As we shall see in a later chapter, Walworth County, 
which includes Lake Geneva within its bounds, was out- 
lined in 1839, having been formerly included in Racine 
County, of which it remained officially a part till 1841, 

[66] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

when it was fully organized and the county seat located 
at Elkhorn, where it has remained. The township of 
Geneva was formed in 1839 ^^s°j though the village was 
not incorporated until 1844. 

The first accommodation for travelers in the vicinity 
of the Lake was the house of a Mr. Ferguson, in Geneva, 
known as the "Owl Tavern," from a large owl that 
had been killed and affixed to the barn. At the same 
time, another house, from a loon similarly displayed, 
was known as the "Loon Tavern." In 1836 a rude log 
"hotel" was built, chimneyless and earth-floOred, which 
was replaced two years later by a "public-house" with 
plastered walls and boasting a "ballroom" on its second 
floor. The first store in the little hamlet was opened in 
1837, and the first school was held in a room over it, 
the first schoolhouse being built the next year. The 
first regular stage route, the common method of public 
conveyance everywhere along the frontier before the 
coming of the railroad, began operations in 1840, running 
from Kenosha to Beloit, its road passing around the north 
shore of the Lake. 

The first permanent settlement on the Lake outside 
of the village of Geneva was at Williams Bay, where, in 
1836, Captain Israel Williams, Sr., of a New England 
family, with his seven stalwart sons, took up claims at 
the head of the Bay, on its northwestern shore. The 
father built a log cabin which he occupied till 1841, 
replacing it by a frame house, where he died eight years 
later. On his death his son Royal bought out his 
brother's interests, and resided there until his death 
in 1886. 

[67] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

The first settlement at Fontana was the farm claim 
of James Van Slyke, who in 1836, built for himself and 
his young wife a cabin on a site between the present 
electric railway station and the turn of the shore road 
westward beside Buena Vista Park. Some of the trees 
that then stood about the house still stand beside 
the road along the shore. Mrs. Van Slyke was widely 
known among the incoming settlers of the neighborhood 
as a woman of eminent practical ability under frontier 
circumstances, and early won the friendship of the 
Indians of the native village that, for a brief time, stood 
almost at her door. 

In the earliest days of the local settlements such 
money as was in circulation consisted as largely of Eng- 
lish, French, and Spanish coins as it did of those bear- 
ing the stamp of the United States government. While 
the earliest trade consisted chiefly of barter of the 
products of fields and forests for the desired goods, when 
money passed from hand to hand it was quite as likely 
to consist of French five-franc pieces, Spanish silver, or 
English sovereigns, as of American dollars or smaller 
pieces. This was of course due to the still recent fur 
trade, so largely in French hands, and to the considerable 
number of English settlers who came to the northeastern 
part of the country. Indeed, the tax collector for the 
township of Sharon for the years 1 843 and 1 844 reported 
that during his entire two years in office he never received 
a single American coin among the I300 a year which it 
was his duty to collect by making the rounds of the 
farms. A considerable amount in American "paper 
money" was received — which he describes as "an un- 

[68] 



\ 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

certain commodity," being of various origins — but it was 
evident that the coin of the government was hoarded by 
all who were so fortunate as to come into its possession. 

The mentioned early "claims" to land in the Lake 
country had no actual standing at law until the formal 
opening and sale of the territory for settlement. They 
were, however, generally respected by neighboring claim- 
ants until legal title could be secured. The first govern- 
mental sale of the newly opened lands of Walworth, Rock, 
Racine, and Kenosha counties took place in Milwaukee 
in February of 1839, lasting for three weeks. Settlers 
took care of their interests and their "claims" at this 
time by sending committees to the sale empowered to 
bid in the selected areas, and by agreeing to deal in 
summary fashion with "outsiders" who should interfere 
with any honest homesteader's "squatter's rights." It 
was currently reported that after the involuntary immer- 
sion in the Milwaukee River of two or three "sharks" 
who endeavored to semi-blackmail settlers by securing 
title to their land and forcing its repurchase, this form 
of "competition" ceased to be heard from. The fixed 
lowest price considered by the government officers for 
the land on sale was $1.25 per acre, and at this price 
practically all land was disposed of. 

A fact which played no small part in the develop- 
ment, the character, and the reputation of the Lake and 
the surrounding country was that the majority of the 
first settlers — farmers, store-keepers, doctors, lawyers — 
were from the states of New York and Pennsylvania, and 
the farther eastern states of Vermont, Massachusetts, 
and Connecticut, rather than from the nearer, western, 

[69] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

semi-frontier regions of Indiana and Illinois. Thus the 
New England ideas and modes of thought, established 
customs of government and justice, and the correspond- 
ing forms of law, politics, property, temperance, educa- 
tion, and religion, came with these men and women and 
gave a permanent color and character to the growing 
hamlets. That there has been something contagious 
about these principles, their ruling ideas and motives, 
and much of satisfactoriness in their general effect and 
operation, is proved by the fact that even after the lapse 
of nearly a century, anyone familiar with American life 
and attitudes and acquainted with the communities of 
the Lake country may detect more traces of a flavor of 
New England thought and ways than is often found in 
mixed and even polyglot elements of the rural districts 
and towns of the Middle West. 

An amusing social experiment, which the writer has 
tried in every part of the country and repeatedly in 
Walworth County, is for the motorist to wave a friendly 
hand at any of the rural population whom he may pass, 
at work in the fields or around the farmsteads. If done 
without effusiveness or condescension, but as an im- 
promptu semi-greeting, in ninety-nine cases out of 
a hundred the American-born farmer or one who has 
caught the American spirit, will lift a hand in friendly 
return. In ninety-nine times in a hundred the foreign- 
born individual, the newcomer to our shores, will stare 
uncomprehendingly at the phenomenon, without a trace 
of comprehension or grasp of the spirit of the action. 
To the American the gesture is equivalent to meaning, 
"We don't know each other, it's true, but here's good 

[70] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

luck to us both, just the same!" It is a gesture of the 
democratic spirit, of recognition of a mutual equality, 
the thing the foreigner has never known in "the old 
country," and that only slowly dawns upon his conscious- 
ness here. His children, however, are often quicker to 
catch the unspoken good will of the semi-greeting, and 
to respond in kind. The chances are that they have 
learned in the spirit of their schools what their parents 
are far slower to realize. It is worth noting, too, that 
a wave or a lift of the hand, between passing strangers, 
as an indication of an unspoken friendliness, greeting, or 
good will, has even a bit of typical American history of 
its own. In the old frontier days of the farther west — 
as Philip Ashton Rollins has pointed out in his notable 
book on The Cowboy — it was regarded as the grossest 
discourtesy, even as suspicious of a latent hostility, for 
any rider or other individuals passing through the country 
to fail to at least lift a hand in greeting to anyone, 
strangers included, whom he might pass. 

A detailed local account of the growth of the town 
of Lake Geneva exists in the excellent and unusual village 
chronicle of Mr. James Simmons, one of the earliest 
settlers, entitled Annals of Lake Geneva, to which the 
interested reader may be referred, and to whose pages 
the writer is indebted for not a few items of interest and 
value. 

The first railroad reached Geneva in June of 1856, 
though it did not become permanent from this time. It 
was built from Elgin, Illinois, where it connected with a 
line from Galena to Chicago. Its roadbed was of a 
crude type, then not uncommon, consisting of long, 

[71] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

flat bars of iron spiked to wooden stringers laid on the 
ties, a construction which hardly made for durability. 
It suspended operations in the fall of i860. On July 6, 
1 871, the first train on the newly built line of the 
Chicago and Northwestern Railway arrived amid great 
public elation. The citizens promptly contributed $1,000 
toward the erection of a suitable depot, replaced by the 
present station building in 1891. The extension of the 
line to Williams Bay was accomplished with the first 
train thither on June i, 1888. 

The first steamboat on the Lake was brought in 1858 
by a Mr. F. E. Brewster, from Wilmot, Wisconsin, where 
it was built. A stout little craft of 20 tons* capacity, 
65 feet long and of 12-foot beam, with an engine of 15 
horse-power, "The Atlanta" by name, the little vessel 
was capable of carrying 150 passengers, and for some 
years sufficed to take sightseers along the shores. Later 
vessels, memorable to early visitors of their time and 
most unusual in size for a western lake, were "The 
Lady of the Lake," built in 1873, ^^^ ^^^ "Lucius New- 
berry," launched in 1875. These were large, double- 
decked, side-wheel boats, handsomely furnished and 
patronized for many years by an ever increasing num- 
ber of tourists. The former was dismantled after seven- 
teen years' service, and the latter burned at its dock a 
year later. 

The first church in the Lake settlements was organ- 
ized by a Presbyterian frontier missionary. Rev. Lemuel 
Hall, in the town of Geneva in 1839, "^^^ ^^^ members 
did not build till a dozen years later, and in 1883 it 
voted to affiliate with the Congregational denomina- 

[72] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

tion. The Baptists organized in 1840, and finished the 
first house of worship in 1846. The Catholic church was 
founded in 1847 and aptly named "St. Francis* Church," 
after St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, Switzerland, 
in the first part of the seventeenth century. 

The resident population of Geneva in 1847 had 
reached 1,238 persons. In 1885 there were 2,281; in 
1895, 2,452. Today there are 2,600 residents. In the 
summer season these figures are of course enormously 
increased by the crowds of visitors, motorists, boarders, 
residents, and tourists, whose coming in large numbers 
dates from the completion of the railroad and the spread 
of a knowledge of the attractions of the Lake, in 1873, 
and often reach a total of over 100,000 persons in a 
season. Among the visitors to the Lake in the first 
year of its great popularity were both General Ulysses S. 
Grant and General Philip Sheridan, then, as throughout 
their lives, the popular idols of the nation. In the same 
year the first large hotel was built, the well-remembered 
"Whiting House," which for fifty years occupied the site 
of the present elaborate and beautifully situated Hotel 
Geneva. 

But one notable disaster — if we except^the largely fatal 
epidemic of whooping cough among the Indian villages 
in 1836 — has ever marred the history of the Lake. This 
occurred during the great storm of the afternoon of Sun- 
day, July 7, 1895, during whose unprecedented violence 
a steam launch with six persons on board was sunk, mid- 
way between the old resort of Kaye's Park on the south- 
ern shore, and Cedar Point, directly opposite, in no feet 
of water, all the occupants of the vessel being Jost. 

[73] 



CHAPTER IV 
VEGETATION OF THE LAKE GENEVA COUNTRY 

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, it may 
be taken for granted that the present vegetation era in 
the Lake Geneva neighborhood is not more than twenty 
thousand years old. As has been commented in our 
chapter on geology, that date in the far past — your 
geologist does not consider it at all "far," but on the 
contrary quite a modern period in geologic time — is 
generally accepted as about the time of the final recession 
of the southern edge of the ice of the last glacial invasion. 
As the last ice sheet is known to have extended only as 
far southward as, approximately, the present Wisconsin- 
Illinois state line, the territory about the Lake must have 
been among the earliest areas uncovered by the final melt- 
ing of its icy covering. As the previous vegetation of 
the interglacial periods must have been completely 
extinguished by the subsequent return of the ice, on its 
final disappearance all vegetation had to begin anew. 

Moreover, the terrain also, the rock, gravel, and earth 
formations which we may think of as thus left bare for 
re-covering by the new growths which were the ancestors 
of the vegetation of today, was thus finally left molded 
into very much the topography — the contours, hills, 
valleys, level areas, and lakes — which we see today. 
The successive glacial invasions had each altered to a 
considerable degree the contours of the earth over which 
they had advanced or which they had covered. With 
the final retirement of the ice the surface thus bared may 

[75] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

be thought of as left in form and outHne much as we 
have it now, ready for the new vegetation to take root, 
to spring up and develop, and to follow literally and 
swiftly the primal command, now for the first time 
allowed a long future for its execution, to "be fruitful, 
and multiply, and replenish the earth." The ages of 
successive plowings and harrowings were over, and the 
vast garden was now ready for replanting. 

In the meantime, some of the vegetation, like some 
forms of animal life, had been permanently shifted by the 
glacial waves. Once upon a time, such trees as the 
pawpaw and the osage orange grew as far north as Toronto, 
but after their extinction in that latitude by the ice they 
never returned as far north again. Similarly, during the 
southward prevalence of the cold periods accompanying 
the ice, several of the more northerly forms of vegetation, 
such as the larch, the white cedar, and other conifers, 
spread as far south as Georgia. With the recession of 
the ice these forms also retired northward again, and 
became extinct in their temporary more southern habitat. 
Still again, in the mild periods between some of the ice 
epochs, dense forests are known to have existed as far 
out on the western plains as Iowa and South Dakota, 
where, thus far in the post-glacial period in which we 
live today, they have never returned. 

Swiftly, however, upon the heels of the northward- 
shrinking glaciers the new waves of vegetation followed 
and covered the great areas now open to their spread. 
First sprang up, of course, the grasses, sedges, reeds, and 
such forms of northern shrubs as mature rapidly, and 
whose seeds are borne to a considerable distance, by such 

[76] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

agencies as winds, birds, and the like. In their train 
followed the slower-growing plants and those whose seeds, 
like the fruits of the nut-bearing trees, seem to have 
depended for their distribution, as they do still, upon 
transportation by squirrels and other animals. This has 
even been so recognized as forming what we may call the 
means of invasion by these trees that attempts have been 
made by scientists to compute the length of time since 
the end of the last glacial invasion by estimating how long 
it would take, and how many generations of seedlings 
would be needed, to effect the extension of nut-bearing 
trees from the more southern territory which they occu- 
pied during that ice period to their known range by 
the time of the discovery of the continent by the white 

race!^ 

There is every reason for believing that, dependent 
upon climatic conditions first of all, as all plant hfe is, 
the vegetation of the Lake Geneva neighborhood soon 
after the final disappearance of the ice, and of the condi- 
tions which had efl'ected its existence, gradually became 
organized into the plant associations of the same forms 
and species which mark it today or which prevailed at 
the time of its discovery by the whites. This was accom- 
plished by the invasion of more southern forms and by 
the dying out of the arctic or subarctic forms that 
retreated northward with the retirement of the ice till 
they reached that territory where the remnants of the 
glacial ice still linger, with its neighboring typically 
arctic forms of vegetation. With the northward dis- 
appearance of these forms of vegetation there moved 

I Chamberlain and Salisbury, Geology, III. 533-34- 

[77] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

also the animal life which subsisted chiefly upon them or 
under their conditions. Thus the musk ox and the 
reindeer, whose remains have been found along the edge 
of the once glaciated area from West Virginia to Iowa, 
have been in historic time confined to the Arctic Circle. 
In their stead there now moved in over their one-time 
pasture ground the animals whose food and favoring 
surroundings were those of what we call the temperate 
zones. 

With this northward retirement of the fauna and flora 
of colder latitudes, the pines, the spruces, the firs, and 
the larch (or tamarack) largely deserted the shores and 
hills of Lake Geneva. There is no evidence that any 
of what are commonly called the "evergreens" ever 
formed any considerable proportion of the recent forests 
about the Lake. In other portions of the state the absence 
of pines today does not signify that there were none there 
when the white man came, but only that he and his 
descendants have exterminated them in the course of 
their clearing of the land. In parts of Door County, for 
instance, not a pine tree may be seen today, but at the 
same time the traveler will note with interest that 
whole fields on some farms are still surrounded by 
curious fences composed of rows of often enormous pine 
stumps, their great, straggling roots interlacing, their 
wood now iron-hard and practically indestructible by 
the elements. Some of these improvised fences date 
back nearly a century, and were placed in position by 
the earliest settlers, who found practically the entire 
peninsula of Door County densely wooded with pine 
forests. These being presently cut in the process of 

[78] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

making clearings and farms, their stumps were used to 
form inclosureSj some of which have been allowed to 
remain ever since. 

Nothing of the sort has been the case around Lake 
Geneva. A few straggling conifers managed to maintain 
their existence, some lingering until today, others occasion- 
ally attaining a size that attracted the attention of the 
Indians by their uniqueness in the neighborhood. Such 
a one was the tall red cedar which, as mentioned in our 
chapter on the Indian population, attracted the admiring 
notice of the red men and was accordingly cut down, 
trimmed, stripped of its bark, and set up as the "council 
pole" indicating the residence of Big Foot, the chief of 
the local Pottawatomies at the time of the discovery of 
the Lake by the whites. From the appearance of pro- 
longed weathering shown by the extant remains of this 
symbol, it is believed to have occupied its distinguishing 
position in the settlement at the western end of the Lake 
for some decades at least. 

A very few other relatives of the pine were found by 
the first white men, and here and there some still stand. 
A few stunted cedars occupy some irregular, gravelly 
knolls in Lyons Township, east of the southern road from 
Geneva to Lyons. A few are found where they have 
been allowed or encouraged to remain on the grounds of 
private estates about the Lake. A tamarack grove of 
considerable extent stands in a low area in Bloomfield 
Township, near Genoa Junction. In former centuries it 
doubtless furnished the tough, stringy fibers used by the 
Indians in their canoe-making, as Longfellow makes 
Hiawatha exclaim: 

[79] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Give me of your roots, O Tamarack! 
Of your fibrous roots, O Larch-Tree ! 
My canoe to bind together — 
So to bind the ends together 
That the water may not enter, 
That the water may not wet me. 

Another product of the pine family, wherever these 
were found, was in constant demand by the Indians for 
their canoes. This was the sap or resinous exudate, which 
was collected, heated, and poured over the seams of the 
craft, where it soon hardened and rendered them perfectly 
water-tight. This practice was rare among the Indians 
of the Lake except as such canoes came from farther 
north, as, for lack of other adaptable local material, their 
canoes were almost wholly made of hollowed logs, which, 
if vastly slower and more laborious to manufacture, were 
infinitely more solid and long-lived. 

The vast stands of forest which almost wholly covered 
the uplands of the Lake country for centuries before, 
and at the time of, its discovery were chiefly of a few 
species of hardwood, usually growing to a great size and 
in such abundance that almost a century of settlement has 
happily not been able to effect their extermination. Of 
these the oaks were probably the most abundant, as they 
are still wherever the original woods have been allowed 
to remain or where another generation of trees has 
followed the clearing away of the original occupants of 
the ground. The white oak and the bur oak were the 
most common, the former not infrequently attaining a 
height of loo feet, with a trunk 4 feet in diameter, 
while the latter, sometimes known from its acorn as the 

[80] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

"mossy-cup oak," is known in places in the Mississippi 
Valley to reach the great height of i6o feet. Other oaks 
intermingle with these, the red oak. Jack oak, the swamp 
white oak on the borders of the marshes, and the yellow 
or chinquapin oak being the most abundant. The red 
oak, with its noble outlines, massive trunk, and lovely 
pink-and-white budding leaves in springtime, attains its 
greatest perfection in this latitude, from the southern 
shore of Lake Erie westward to the Mississippi River. 

The great hardwood forests formed by the natural 
abundance of these trees almost completely covered, at 
the time of the coming of the whites, the uplands, hills, 
valleys, ravines, and indeed all but the swamps, river 
valleys, and channels of the watercourses of northern 
Illinois and southern Wisconsin, as of so great an area of 
other Central states, southern Michigan, and northern 
Indiana and Ohio. Occasional naturally open spaces in 
such forests were commonly called by the settlers "oak 
openings," from the invariable nature of the surrounding 
woods. Their timber furnished the pioneer with the logs 
for his first cabin or the beams for the later, more preten- 
tious and commodious dwelling which succeeded it. 
For every use for which wood was needed or to which it 
could be adapted, their seemingly inexhaustible abundance 
afforded endless quantities and of every size and strength. 
For decades, of course, as perhaps in the majority of rural 
residences even today, their wood provided all the fuel 
that was used, the year around. The regular late autumn 
task on every farm was the setting aside of so many days 
or weeks for the hauling, cutting, and splitting of the 
firewood for the coming winter, much of which had been 

[8i] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

felled in the forests earlier in the year, and cut and piled 
for later hauling. Not infrequently, depending on the 
size of the pioneer's home and its facilities and needs, 
this work of getting up the winter wood took an entire 
month of his time and that of his sons. On every farm 
the wood lot was that part of the claim or farm from which 
this supply was drawn, and this was often selected beside 
some lake or stream as affording easy opportunity for 
hauling such supplies over the ice of midwinter. On 
the original claims which were made to the shores of the 
Lake itself, the slopes along the water's edge were fre- 
quently designated as "So-and-so's wood lot," and many 
of the spots where modern summer homes stand were 
thus first cleared, while the roads by which they are 
reached were first made by the settler for hauling out his 
winter fuel or his loads for the nearest market. Before 
the general spread of the use of coal in the Middle West 
the industry of cutting and shipping wood for use in towns 
and cities assumed large proportions, and its supply 
furnished many a farmer's revenue during the fall and 
winter months. 

By some students and observers there has been claimed 
as large an original extent and abundance for the various 
varieties of trees of the maple family as for the oaks 
themselves. This was probably hardly the case, and is 
certainly not substantiated by the remaining standing 
forests, but it is still certain that such varieties as the silver 
(soft or river) and red maples abounded along the streams 
and about the margins of swamps, while the sugar (or 
hard) maple occupied many sheltered ravines and fertile 
hillsides. To the aboriginal inhabitants the chief value 

[82] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

of the maples lay in the sugar-maple groves or "sugar 
bushes," as the whites always called their dense clumps, 
from which in the springtime, throughout the central 
latitudes of the continent, both white and red men drew 
immense quantities of that sap which was easily if often 
in most primitive fashion converted into the maple sugar 
of commerce and the maple syrup of fortunate family 
tables. Today, when a certain government report stated 
that there was not found in the American market a single 
brand of maple sugar or syrup which had not been 
adulterated by at least the addition of some other 
elements, it is difficult for Americans to imagine the extent 
to which the early maple-sugar trade existed. In the 
earliest trade reports of local markets throughout Wis- 
consin and Illinois, in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, along with the summaries of the lumber, beef, 
pork, cheese, and other commodities marketed locally, 
one frequently finds stated the number of hundreds of 
pounds of maple sugar dealt in. In the earliest days of the 
frontier settlements of the whole Mississippi Valley, as 
of course earlier still in the more eastern states, to the whites 
as to the Indians, this form of sugar was the only available 
sweetening in use, and its store formed no small part of 
the winter's provision laid up alike by squaw and frontiers- 
woman. Indeed, in the spring of 1922 the owner of one of 
the estates on the south shore of the Lake made 300 
pounds of maple sugar from the trees of a "sugar bush" 
on the property. Such a possession was also a remarkably 
long-lived source of supply or revenue, as instances are 
known of maple trees which have yielded their annual 
supply of sap continuously for a century. 

[83] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The wood of the maple was only second to that of the 
oak in usefulness to the pioneer. Abundant, strong, 
easily worked, it formed much of his building material 
for every requirement, from house and furniture material 
to fence rails. Equally a favorite was it for the fireplace, 
when cut and allowed to season before being called on to 
furnish its quick, hot blaze beneath the pot hooks. 

Other trees, if not as universally abundant as the oak 
and maple, were yet everywhere common and highly 
prized for their qualities or their annual yield. Foremost 
among these were of course the walnuts, butternuts, and 
hickories. Of all these their strong, hard timbers were 
among the most valuable for the purposes of both Indians 
and whites, though of course workable by the former, 
with their crude stone axes, knives, and scrapers, only 
with the utmost difficulty. Their quantities of nuts were 
eagerly gathered in the fall, as they are still wherever they 
have been allowed to remain, and were not less appreciated 
by the nut-eating rodents, the squirrels and chipmunks, 
by whom the entire yield of a tree was often speedily 
borne away to their underground storehouses. 

Of all the trees which originally so densely covered the 
hills about Lake Geneva, the linden or basswood was 
perhaps the favorite of the Indian, because the most 
easily and largely adapted to his needs. Its wood is at 
once light, soft, tough, and durable. From it, as else- 
where described, he made his canoe. Its outer bark 
roofed his lodge. From its inner bark layer the long, 
tough " bast " fibers, very like raffia, supplied a satisfactory 
cordage for innumerable uses and the equipment of both 
the warrior and the squaw. From the linden, the willow, 

[84] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

and the birch, the latter especially in the more northern 
latitudes, and the abundant reeds of the marshes near 
which they usually lived, the domestic outfit of the 
Indian lodge in the Middle West was chiefly constructed. 

The mentioned trees formed the greater proportion of 
the forests growths indigenous to the Lake Geneva 
neighborhood. In addition there were to be found more 
or less everywhere, if not as abundantly, the elm, iron- 
wood, the white ash which the Pottawatomies chose for 
canoe paddles and often for his bow, the birches, bitter 
nut, locust, poplar, cottonwood, slippery elm, winged elm, 
or wahoOj and such fruit-bearing trees as the scarlet haw, 
or thornapple, wild black cherry, wild plum, wild crab- 
apple, and chokecherry. The abundant thickets were 
composed of smaller trees and the larger shrubs, the alder, 
sweet viburnum, dogwood, elderberry, and witchhazel, 
and these the thicker for dense growths of wild raspberry, 
blackberry, and gooseberry bushes, the climbing tangles 
of the wild grape and the wild cucumber. Rarer varieties 
were occasional redbuds and coffee trees, found chiefly 
in moist places, and the six-foot giant Solomon's seal. 

Growths characteristic of swamps and marshes were 
everywhere, more abundantly in the wild state of the 
country than today. Drainage has greatly decreased the 
acreage of these, converting to other uses much of the 
borders of lakes and streams once covered with water, 
bogs, cat-tails, and dense reed growths. Many of the 
once abundant rows of willows bordering such places have 
disappeared with these, especially in recent years with the 
reclaiming of drained land for agriculture. The original 
vegetation of swamps and marshes about the Lake 

[85] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

afforded, as elsewhere, much material for the red man's 
lodge or for the kettle that hung above the fire in its 
center. The making of endless mats of woven marsh 
grasses and reeds was typical of the characteristic labor 
of the Indian women of the Middle West, and these, 
often neatly made and so tightly woven as to be practically 
windproof, now formed the usual wall of the lodge and 
now its only floor-covering. Roots and tubers of marsh 
growths were known to the Indian as edible, of which 
the white man had never heard for such purposes, and 
these, boiled to a syrupy consistency, rivaled the corn, 
beans, squashes, and melons of the local rudely cultivated 
village gardens as a common source of vegetable food. 
One of these sources of such natural food supply was 
afforded by the now famous lotus beds of Grass Lake, 
near Antioch, Illinois. Here it is said that the Pottawat- 
omie came in the fall to dig up the tuberous roots from the 
great marsh beds and to collect the contents of the dried 
and rattling seedpods, adding both to their winter's store. 
All of these forms of vegetation survive, if to a greatly 
lessened extent owing to the clearing of the land, about 
the Lake and more or less throughout its neighborhood 
today. They constitute the great majority of all the 
trees and shrubs which the student of plant life will 
find upon its wooded hills. In all probability just such 
forests covered the same hillsides and bordered similar 
marshes when amid their fastnesses there moved the 
gigantic forms of the last of the mastodons, the wood- 
tenanting bison herds, and the now long-extinct saber- 
toothed wild cat. Compared with that long vista into 
the past all our present-day descendants of that forestation 

[86] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

of the long ago are young things indeed. Yet in view of 
the known ages of oaks and lindens in England and in 
Germany, where specimens of each are believed to have 
attained the age of a thousand years, there may be trees 
still standing on the hills above the Lake which looked 
down upon its waters before ever Columbus discovered 
the New World of mankind; and many, many more 
behind whose trunks the red man stalked the deer or lay 
in ambush for his foe. 

The majority of visitors to Lake Geneva see its wooded 
hills and shores only in the comparatively uniform green 
of midsummer. More fortunate are those who watch 
the charming and delicate beauty of the reclothing of 
the hillsides in early spring or are fairly startled by the 
brilliant emblazonment of the massed ranks of oaks and 
maples in the fall. Few city folk are familiar with what 
Tennyson wrote of as the "ruby buds" and "million 
emeralds" of the opening linden leaves in the spring, or 
the "scarlet flag" as Thoreau calls it, of the red maple 
at the same season, or the delicate silver-pink of the baby 
oak leaves. The blended crimson-green autumnal dome 
of some splendid sugar maple is more familiar, from its 
presence in city parks, as is the pure, pale yellow of the 
silver and the ash-leaved varieties in late October, 
Perhaps every motorist, and that means everyone, is 
nowadays familiar with the flame of the sumach along 
the highways, side by side with the goldenrod, the masses 
of asters, and the brilliance of the cardinal flower. But 
only the seeker ever sees the first blue and the first yellow 
violets of May, the yellow moccasins or lady's-slippers of 
the deep woods, the occasional masses of red or white 

[87] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

trilllums, and, almost as rare as the fringed gentian itself 
but like it to be found of those who seek, the fairy-like, 
unearthly-looking pearly white of the Indian pipe. 

The passion to pick all the wild flowers one sees or 
can reach, if ever pardonable, is perhaps so in the city 
dwellers who see them so rarely. At every season of the 
year one sees them motoring homeward on holiday after- 
noons with handfuls or bunches of the flowers of the 
season, hepaticas or anemones or spring beauties; later 
the marsh marigolds and jack-in-the-pulpits and whole 
branches of apple blossoms; and in midsummer armfuls 
of brakes and ferns and even maidenhair and the superb 
wild tiger lilies. Later still they invade the marshes 
and carry away stacks of cat-tails. Last of all those 
who have toured the northern part of the state are seen 
returning Chicago-ward with a whole small pine tree 
tied on behind or lashed to a running board, evidently 
in the hope that it will keep till midwinter and give the 
family a Christmas tree of their own selection on their 
precious annual vacation. 

Yet why must they do it ^ The truest flower lover 
is not the one who picks and bears away every blossom 
in sight or within reach, soon to fade at best, often 
completely eradicating the growth on the original site. 
There are miles of popular highways about the Lake from 
which the once dense bordering of asters and goldenrod 
have been almost exterminated by the thoughtlessness 
of late-summer motorists. Places in the woods open to 
the public where once the yellow moccasin or lady's- 
slipper grew in abundant natural loveliness are now ab- 
solutely bare of any lingering specimen, having been ruth- 

[88] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

lessly stripped by those who fancied themselves nature- 
lovers! They prove themselves Nature's truest friends 
who can admire, study — even sample, if they must — her 
natural abundance, but leave her gardens uninjured for 
the enjoyment of their fellows and the assurance of 
undiminished beauty for generations to come. 

Space must fail to recount the beauties and loveliness 
of other growths, of shadbush and honeysuckle and wild 
roses and blue lobelia and blue phlox, of columbine and 
wild geranium and buttercups and blue lettuce and blood- 
root, of the star-flowered Solomon's seal and all the 
milkweeds and the fifty varieties of massy goldenrods. 
All are residents of Lake Geneva's shores and are to be 
found by anyone who will take the trouble to look for 
them, with perhaps a botany book along for their identifi- 
cation. 

But what about the poison ivy ? Ah, yes ! We had 
almost forgotten that single vicious tenant of the Lake's 
Garden of Eden. It is abundant in many places, though 
far less so than formerly, as every thoughtful property- 
owner eradicates its lurking ambush wherever it is dis- 
covered. Individuals differ greatly in sensitiveness to 
its baneful effects, some being completely immune to it, 
others discovering its painful and lasting rash, swelling, 
irritation, and discomfort upon the slightest exposure to 
its presence. The writer believes himself to be immune 
to its poison, as a result of having escaped unscathed 
from many contacts with it. But he refuses to base 
that conviction on actual experiment, remembering one 
very pretty girl who undertook to demonstrate to her 
friends that it could not hurt her, with appalling and 

I89] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

lasting consequences! The vine itself is often confused 
with the common woodbine, and patches of the latter 
are shunned accordingly by many. This need never be 
the case, as the two are easily distinguished by the 
fact that the leaves of the woodbine always grow in 
divisions of five, and of the poison ivy in threes. For the 
benefit of any who may suffer from its effects, let the 
writer add here the curious fact that the crushed leaves 
and accompanying juices of the common elderberry, 
applied poultice-fashion to the affected area, will afford 
relief and often even a complete cure. It is a typical 
"old wives' remedy" of the frontier days, it is true, and 
may be found in no pharmacopeia, but it has proved 
effectual in the cases, including the writer's family, in 
which it has been tried, and is gratefully testified to 
accordingly. 

It has been the scope of this chapter to mention only 
the native vegetation of the Lake Geneva country. 
Nothing has been said of the innumerable and wonderful 
additional forms that have been introduced by lovers of 
trees, plants, and flowers, and which have been brought to 
marvelous perfection by the assiduous and loving care 
of some of the foremost gardeners of America, amateur 
and professional. These range from the simple but 
annually charming lilacs of every farmyard, and the dozen 
wonderful varieties developed from them, to the mountain 
ash and the Ginkgo tree of China and the hedges of 
flaming Japanese barberries, the spruces and pines, the 
serried ranks of apple orchards of a score of varieties, and 
the prize displays of great greenhouses full of jeweled 
geraniums and huge chrysanthemums and roses literally 

[90] 




GARDEN VISTA, ESTATE OF E. G. UIHLEIN 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

by the thousands. It is the simple fact that today there 
are to be found on the estates about the Lake every 
variety of tree, shrub, plant, and flower that will thrive 
in the latitude of the region. It is not the less the fact 
that the handsomest places, public and private, are those 
which have been marked by the care bestowed upon the 
planting or transplanting, the arrangement or cultivation, 
of the varieties of tree and flower that have descended 
from those planted here by the Master Gardener of all the 
earth when the servant forces of Nature did His bidding, 
and wrought, after His taste, their earthly Paradise. 



[91I 



CHAPTER V 

THE FISH OF LAKE GENEVA 

Alike in the uncounted centuries of the Indian habita- 
tion of its borders and in the still comparatively few 
decades of the white man's occupation of its shores, the 
fish of Lake Geneva have formed one of its prime attrac- 
tions. To the Indians and the first settlers the fish of 
the Lake were a source ot food second only in importance 
and availability to the game that swarmed in the surround- 
ing forests. The commercial aspect and the financial 
value of the fish trade made an additional appeal in the 
first days of civilized settlement, and no sooner was a 
connection made between the neighborhood and the near- 
est considerable market at Chicago by the completion of 
the railroad, than a large traffic in fish sprang up and 
continued for many years. Until the passage of modern 
laws protective of the fish, there was established every 
winter on the ice of Geneva Bay a great number of fisher- 
men's huts, nicknamed " Pickerel ville," whose catches rose 
in some winters (as in 1872-73) to a total of 40 tons of 
fish caught through the ice and shipped to various cities. 

Happily, from an almost equally early date there have 
been those who have been as much interested in stocking 
the Lake with fish as others were busy depopulating its 
waters. As early as 1863 this work began, in the first 
instance with the quaintly small attempt of an optimistic 
citizen of Geneva who carefully imported from Lake 
Michigan a total of twelve lake trout and three whitefish, 
in the hope that these and their progeny would vastly 

[93] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

"increase and multiply and replenish" the Lake with their 
kind! With the better knowledge and methods of later 
years many thousands of the young of other varieties of 
fish have at times been introduced, chiefly salmon trout, 
California salmon, silver bass, and brook trout. Of all 
these mentioned attempted additions to the original stock 
of the lake, every one has disappeared except the last. 
It is with no small pride that those who know Lake 
Geneva best boast its unique possession of true brook 
trout, and that in numbers, if not sufficient to satisfy the 
angler visitant, yet enough to be taken occasionally and 
to be reckoned with by the scientists whose studies have 
given us a remarkably accurate knowledge of its finny 
population. 

The most thorough study of the fish of the Lake that 
has ever been made is the work of Professor A. S. Pearse, 
of the Department of Zoology of the University of Wis- 
consin, who in the summer of 1920 made a thorough inves- 
tigation of the fish of Geneva, their food, their respective 
habits, and of such parasitic affilictions as are inimical to 
their welfare. The results of this notable work may be 
found in the pamphlet, "University of Wisconsin Studies 
in Science," No. 3, entitled. The Distribution and Food of 
the Fishes of Three Wisconsin Lakes in Summer^ to whose 
rich contents of valuable information the reader is referred 
who desires full scientific information with respect to the 
fish of the Lake. 

Professor Pearse's work states that the fish to be 
found in the Lake, named in the order of their propor- 
tionate occurrence, are: yellow perch, rock bass, small- 
mouth black bass, cisco, wall-eyed pike, common sucker, 

[94] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

pickerel, pumpkinseed, bluegill, large-mouth black bass, 
and brook trout. 

From Professor Pearse's comments — for whose valuable 
and accurate statements both the interested fisherman 
and the student of Nature cannot be grateful enough — 
we quote the following interesting comparisons: 

Lake Geneva contains the largest number of desirable game fishes — 
wall-eyed pike, small-mouth black bass and pickerel — of any of the 
lakes under observation [Mendota, Michigan, Pepin, Wingra, and 
Geneva]. 

There are fewer different species of fish than in any other lake. 
This is probably due to lack of variety in shore habitats. The domi- 
nant large fishes are yellow perch, small-mouth black bass, rock bass, 
pickerel, suckers, and wall-eyed pike. The rock bass, small-mouth 
black bass, and wall-eyed pike are more abundant than in any other 
lake. There are a small number of bluegills, large-mouth black bass, 
and brook trout. Of the eleven species caught during these studies, six 
did not extend below a depth of 15 meters: common sucker, pickerel, 
pumpkinseed, bluegill, large-mouth black bass, and brook trout. 
(One meter = 39 inches.) Ciscoes are found at depths of 1 5 to 25 meters 
in summer — above the region of stagnation and in fairly cool water. 
Though there appear to be many young large-mouth black bass in 
the lake, there are few adults. There are very few shiners. Bull- 
heads, gars, and carp are rare in the lake. 

Professor Pearse's investigations and the experience 
of the average fisherman alike demonstrate that the 
numbers of perch, rock bass, and small-mouth black bass 
far surpass all the other varieties. These are the fish 
caught almost invariably and in considerable numbers by 
every fisherman, from the expert sportsman to the small 
boys who spend every summer holiday on the piers with 
bamboo pole and worm can, and on whose frequently 
well-laden strings the perch and rock bass outnumber all 

[951 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

others. The number of perch is very large, surprisingly 
so to the uninitiated. The writer has often seen a single 
rowboat take a hundred in a morning with hook and 
line. In two hauls of a seine, 50 feet long by 4 feet wide. 
Professor Pearse caught the remarkable total of twenty- 
eight hundred perch! — which were of course promptly 
returned to the water as soon as they had been counted 
for the purposes of the mentioned studies and estimates. 

The more highly prized and "gamy" fishes, the small- 
mouth black bass and the large-mouth variety, are gener- 
ally taken only by fairly expert anglers who know the Lake 
well. They are perhaps chiefly found along the rocky 
ledges that form the bottom of the Lake at points in 
Buttons Bay and Geneva Bay. During the season excel- 
lent catches of these fish may be seen brought in almost 
any day at the piers in Geneva village. Occasionally 
they surprise the fisherman elsewhere. The writer saw a 
very much astonished lady "fisherman" struggling with 
an unexpected prize in the form of a 4^-pound large- 
mouth bass that took a "minnow hook" and its tiny 
bait in the shallows under the trees of Conference Point, 
but was finally successfully landed. 

The cooler months of the year are the best fishing 
months on Geneva, as in similar lakes in its latitude. 
The water of the Lake stagnates somewhat in the heat of 
midsummer, when the fish betake themselves to the cooler 
depths of their respective favorite levels. The summer 
fisherman should remember this and lengthen his line 
accordingly. 

The Lake is fortunately entirely free from the typical 
coarse river fishes of other waters of the Mississippi drainage 

[96] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

system, the red horse, quillback, spoonbill, moon-eye, 
gizzard shad, and catfish. It is practically untenanted 
by carp, which is by preference a muddy-bottom fish, 
and almost unknown in deep, clear lake waters. 

The common foods of the fish of Lake Geneva are, first, 
other fish in the case of the perch, pike, large-mouth and 
small-mouth bass; of the other varieties, chiefly insect 
larvae; the exception being the rock bass, whose favorite 
food, the crayfish, is hunted vigorously along the rocky or 
pebbly shores. 

In the mind of the average amateur naturalist andfisher- 
man the name of Lake Geneva is closely connected with 
that of the cisco. By some it is believed, and occasionally 
asserted, that the cisco is only found in this lake. On the 
contrary, ciscoes are found in many other lakes of Wiscon- 
sin and Indiana, and they are even more abundant in 
Green Lake, Wisconsin, in proportion to other fish, than 
in the waters of Geneva. The association of this partic- 
ular fish chiefly with Lake Geneva in the minds of the 
less informed is traceable to the once very considerable 
custom, before the passing of present fishing laws, of 
supplying the Chicago public markets with great quanti- 
ties of ciscoes from Geneva in the late spring, the spawn- 
ing time of these fish. At all other times of the year they 
live in the deeper water of the Lake, at a depth of 60 to 
80 feet, as Professor Pearse determined, and are practically 
never taken by fishermen or with hook and line during 
these ten to eleven months of the year. At spawning 
time, however, they rise to the upper levels and shallower 
waters of the Lake and its shores, from the latter part of 
May through the first half of June. At this time, as 

[97] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

doubtless ever since human habitation of the Lake shore, 
they are taken in large numbers by fishermen, who often 
come from Chicago and other cities for this fishing and 
are amply rewarded by the readiness with which the 
cisco then takes a bait. In the old days of the market 
fishing, a single rowboat would often take two hundred in 
the course of a day. 

In 1872 Professor Louis Agassiz pronounced the cisco 
to be a species of the group of whitefishes, which 
include the lake herring. Lake Michigan whitefish, and 
Menomonee whitefish of the Great Lakes; the whiting 
and shadwater of Lake Winnepesaukee, New Hamp- 
shire; the Otsego Lake whitefish of Otsego Lake, New 
York; and the Lake Michigan cisco of the upper Great 
Lakes. Like all these, its relatives, the cisco is a beau- 
tiful silvery white in color with sometimes a shade of 
steely blue on the back, and is spiritedly gamy and combat- 
ive for its size during the season when it is taken. At 
this time its flesh is also excellent, firm, and well flavored, 
though at other times of the year it becomes soft and less 
desirable for the table. It may attain a size of 8 or 9 inches 
in length, though its relative the lake herring of the Great 
Lakes, taken at about the same time of year, frequently 
attains twice this length. 

The brook trout mentioned as found in the Lake are 
the result of "planting" by various parties interested in 
stocking the waters with the most desirable varieties 
adapted to life and increase under the special character- 
istics of the Lake. While other varieties introduced have 
completely disappeared, the brook trout have thrived and 
multiphed, and occasionally surprise and delight the angler 

[98] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

who has expected only a perch or rock bass to take his 
offered worm, when he is astonished to find a fight on 
his hands, and is perhaps rewarded with a good-sized 
"speckled beauty." While the least common, propor- 
tionately, of the fish inhabiting the Lake, they are yet con- 
fined to no particular locality, but have been taken alike 
in fairly deep water and in the creeks and rivulets along 
the shores. 

The pickerel of Lake Geneva, as of the other lakes of 
the county, are occasionally caught of a surprising size, 
up to 1 8 pounds or more. The wall-eyed pike, in rare 
instances, equal or even surpass this. In June, 1922, the 
first cast of a fisherman's spoon, made half at random from 
a pier head, was taken by a fish that was landed after a 
twenty-minute battle and proved to be a pike 48 inches 
long and weighing 17^ pounds. An even larger specimen, 
weighing over 21 pounds, was taken a few days later along 
the eastern shore of Williams Bay, on a small single-hook 
double-spoon and a lo-pound-test line. The lucky fish- 
erman won after a forty-five-minute battle that attracted 
to the nearest point along the shore every spectator from 
the neighborhood. This great fish, with its powerful 
head, soHd bulk, and vigorous fighting qualities, was a 
worthy rival of the famous muskellunge of the more 
northern lakes. 

Unlike the denizens of some of the less fortunate middle 
western waters, the fish of the Lake have been proved 
by Professor Pearse's investigations to be almost free from 
parasites. None have been found which would be in any 
way injurious to man. The most common parasite is the 
larva of a small trematode worm, which causes the small 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

black spot often seen in the skin and fins of rock bass, 
perch, and other fishes. This larva, curiously enough, can- 
not develop to maturity unless eaten by a heron. When 
this bird eats a fish containing these parasites, the larval 
worms are set free from their cysts and find their way to 
the esophagus, where they attach themselves and pass 
their adult life. Their eggs pass out from the intestine 
of the heron and hatch into larvae which bore into the 
skin of some fish and wait to be eaten, and thus their 
strange life-cycle goes on. 

Every conclusion, therefore, of the scientists who have 
studied the fish of the Lake, is but added testimony to 
its unusual desirability for the fisherman's pursuits. The 
small-mouth black bass and the wall-eyed pike are abun- 
dant, while such undesirable types as the carp and dogfish 
are so rare as to be almost non-existent in its waters. 
The number of small-mouth black bass is very unusual, 
far above that in any other lake hitherto studied in the 
state. This fish is primarily an insect-eater, and is best 
and most readily caught on grasshoppers, cisco flies, or 
artificial flies. For the wall-eyed pike the minnow is the 
bait preferred, as has been said, by its most experienced 
pursuers, though these are rivaled by the use of the small 
frog or simple spoon. 



lOO 



4 



CHAPTER VI 
ANIMALS AND BIRDS OF LAKE GENEVA 

Not only "once upon a time," but for a time that 
covered uncounted centuries together, the whole neighbor- 
hood of Lake Geneva, like many other parts of the con- 
tinent for the same period, was none other than a literal 
"hunter's paradise;" and such its Indian residents or 
visitors knew it to be and prized it accordingly. 

Until a date shortly before the arrival of the white 
man the buffalo roamed the woods and open savannahs 
of southern Wisconsin, and that in considerable numbers. 
While they are generally thought of as having been chiefly 
denizens of the great western plains, as they were, the 
fact is that prior to the combined destructiveness of the 
demands of the fur trade and the westward progress of 
settlement, the habitat of the buffalo extended practically 
to the Atlantic Ocean. 

Of the long existence of the buffalo in what is now 
Wisconsin there is ample evidence. Among the many 
Indian mounds found at Beloit is a group which is thought 
to have been erected by prehistoric hunters as a game 
driveway for the purpose of taking these animals. Of this 
group of artificial elevations, two have been identified as 
"effigies" of buffalo. Father Marquette, writing of his 
first trip, in 1673, mentions in his Journal seeing buffalo 
along the Wisconsin River, in the southwestern portion 
of the state. The published records of the Field Museum 
of Natural History contain mentions of buffalo lingermg 
in the western portion of the state in 1832 and 1833. 

[lOl] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

By the time of the arrival of the first whites in the 
Lake Geneva country the buffalo had disappeared, as 
had the elk, the largest former local resident of the deer 
tribe. The latter had nevertheless been abundant at a 
period still fairly recent, for their shed antlers were con- 
tinually found by the pioneer settlers, as the name of the 
town of Elkhorn, the county seat of Walworth County, 
itself indicates. As late as the year 1899 a magnificent 
pair of elk antlers were found in Pewaukee Lake, in 
Waukesha County, and are preserved in the Milwaukee 
Public Museum. In the northern portion of the state 
the elk lingered for some decades, instances being on 
record of their having been killed by Indians of that region 
as late as 1863. 

The early records of the trade in furs and skins at the 
frontier trading posts of Wisconsin indicate what were the 
fauna of the territory immediately prior to its settlement. 
Thus we learn that the principal animals hunted by the 
Indian residents, formerly for food and the various 
articles of clothing and domestic equipment derived from 
their source, and later for barter with the whites, were the 
Virginia or white-tail deer, the black bear, the timber 
wolf, the coyote or prairie wolf, lynx, wildcat, otter, 
beaver, fox, wolverine, badger, marten, mink, raccoon, 
and muskrat. In addition to these there were of course 
continually taken by the native hunters such smaller 
animals as the skunk, porcupine, woodchuck, gray and 
fox squirrels, the common gray or "cotton-tail" rabbit, 
the larger northern hare or "snowshoe rabbit," and the 
weasel, or ermine, as it was called when in its much-prized 
snow-white winter coat. 

[102] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Of all the larger animals the bear was probably the 
only one regarded as a possibly dangerous foe when 
attacked. The killing of a bear was always deemed by 
the red men sufficiently an exploit to warrant the successful 
hunter's wearing some personal decoration emblematic of 
the achievement. A few years ago a boy living in Water- 
town, in Jefferson County, exploring an Indian mound 
beside a small stream west of the city and north of Lake 
Mills, unearthed a human skeleton with which he found 
a number of well-preserved bear's claws, each pierced at 
the base, obviously the remains of a necklace of the strung 
claws of such an animal, which some Indian hunter had 
worn as a trophy of the fierce encounter, and which had 
been on his person at his burial. The vicinity of Lake 
Mukwonago, immediately north of Walworth County, was 
a noted resort for black bear in Indian times, and thither 
the young hunters were sent to procure these animals 
when some great savage banquet was about to be held. 
The name of the lake itself is said to be a corruption of 
two Indian words meaning "fat black bear." 

Such, if to a decreased extent, yet in numbers which 
were rightly regarded as little short of marvelous, was 
the prevalence of wild animals when the first white men 
came, and for a few years thereafter. The deer were 
far the most numerous of the larger animals. In Mrs. 
Kinzie's account of her party's journey from Fort Dear- 
born to Fort Winnebago, i.e., Chicago to Portage, in 
1 83 1, she mentions that even in midsummer, the season 
of the least wandering and activity on the part of the 
deer tribe, these animals were constantly seen, crossing 
the trail or the line of march or springing off at one side 

[103] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

amid the dense timber at the party's passing. Within 
a few years afterward they still existed in such numbers 
that the first settlers around the Lake reported that it 
was no uncommon sight in winter to see deer crossing 
on the ice and snow in herds that extended from shore 
to shore. As late as 1842 deer were so abundant about 
the village of Delavan that experienced residents mention 
that it was a matter of but a short trip and a brief absence 
from the hamlet to enable any hunter to procure the 
desired venison, while the animals thus seen on such a 
trip were described as "apparently thousands in number." 
In wintertime the hunters wore white hunting garments 
to render themselves less strikingly visible amid the snow, 
and when using horses often covered their darker animals 
with white sheets for the same purpose. 

As for other animals than the deer, many of the first- 
comers to the shores of Lake Geneva reported that one 
could hardly ever look out over the frozen lake without 
seeing one or more dark objects, animals of one kind or 
another, crossing its white expanse. 

Within a few years of the rapid entry of settlement on 
the rich woodlands and fertile clearings of southeastern 
Wisconsin this abundance of the larger animal life became 
a thing of the past. Increased numbers of hunters, with 
the white man's superior weapons, slew the larger ani- 
mals in great numbers, for food or for the last years of the 
fur trade, while the continual cutting down of the forests 
for wood or to clear the land for agriculture steadily 
decreased their natural habitat and forced the survivors 
northward to the less-settled districts and the still un- 
touched forests, a process in the spread of civilization and 

[104] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

the inevitably accompanying extinction of wild life before 
the coming of man which we may still see going on in the 
northern portion of the state. 

The wild life of the mammals lingering in so settled 
a country as the Lake Geneva neighborhood today is 
confined to those smaller animals whose habitat and 
adaptability to changing circumstances enable them to sur- 
vive and to find food and refuge even amid the encroach- 
ments of civilization and cultivation. They are probably 
no more than the raccoon, mink, muskrat, gray and fox 
squirrels, woodchuck, common gray rabbit, the skunk 
and the weasel, the gopher and the chipmunk. The 
rabbit may still be found in every patch of woods, and, as 
everywhere, is much more abundant in some years than 
in others. Amply supplied with food and dense cover in 
midsummer, he is less often noticed then than in the 
wintertime, when his tracks betray his presence every- 
where and the bark of many an orchard tree suffers from 
his keen teeth. In the first of the spring, too, he is the 
object of execration by every gardener, who soon discovers 
that there is nothing that "B'rer Rabbit" enjoys more 
than the first succulent green tips of everything that 
appears above the mold of neatly planned gardens. The 
raccoon, too, for so large and bulky an animal, manages 
to survive surprisingly even in thickly settled farming 
districts. Living chiefly in hollow trees near his favorite 
haunts, the neighborhood of creeks and streams— perhaps 
conveniently near some well-stocked henhouse as well! — 
and largely nocturnal in his habits, his presence is often 
unsuspected until the diminishing number of little chicks 
reveals the marauder, or in wintertime his tracks, like 

[105] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

the print of tiny hands, show where he passed in the night. 
Raccoons are known to exist today, and have even been 
hunted with success, in the woods of the lakes around 
East Troy and along the north shore of Jackson Creek, 
the inlet of Delavan Lake, while a tame specimen kept 
during a winter in an outdoor cage near the Yerkes 
Observatory grounds was visited by its wild relatives, as 
their tracks in the snow often revealed. As the writer 
was motoring on a recent midsummer evening from Dela- 
van Inlet to East Delavan a large raccoon crossed the 
road in the glare of the headlights that unmistakably re- 
vealed his waddling figure and bushy striped tail. The 
skunk, though diminishing in numbers, especially since his 
black-and-white fur has become an article of fashionable 
wear, is not infrequently "among those present," if not to 
anyone's sight yet nevertheless to everyone's sense of 
smell. The mink and weasel are occasionally trapped by 
farm boys familiar with their likely haunts. The muskrat, 
though decreasing in numbers with the draining of many 
of his favorite swamps, was until recently so numerous as 
actually to have sunk steam yachts, at anchor late in 
the season, by gnawing holes in plumbing pipes exposed 
beneath the water line. 

The ubiquitous woodchuck, thanks to his ceaseless 
alertness, the depth and safety of his holes, and his 
hibernation during half the year, not only survives but 
may be traced on almost any sunny, gravelly slope 
which is conveniently near some rich patch of clover, his 
favorite food. About October i he disappears for his 
long winter's sleep, from which he emerges six months 
later, thin and hungry, and at once sets about fattening 

[io6] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

himself again on the tender green of the reviving fields, 
farms, and gardens. The experience of Thoreau in his 
historic bean patch beside Walden Pond, where he recorded 
the invasions of the woodchucks as, the chief difficulty 
to be overcome in successful bean-raising, is duplicated 
in the devastated rows of many a Walworth County 
market garden. Entirely a vegetarian, the woodchuck 
robs no hen coops, but acquires a bulky size wherever 
the farmer has planned his clover hay. A favorite food 
of the Indian, owing to his plump little body, fattened on 
the cleanest of good vegetable food, he is today molested 
only by the farmer or his boy, or by the farm dog, that 
has to be quick indeed to catch him, and may be well 
bitten by the woodchuck's sharp teeth in the ensuing 
conflict. An occasional rifleman, too, finds that stalking 
the woodchuck as he sits erect and vigilant at the mouth 
of his burrow demands all his patience and woodcraft, 
and that to hit him at long range calls for the most 
accurate of weapons and the best of rifle sights. The 
farmer who locates a burrow puts an end to its occupants 
with little ado and in modern fashion by backing his 
automobile or tractor to the place, connecting one end 
of a section of gutter pipe to the exhaust, inserting the 
other end in the mouth of the burrow, and letting the 
engine run for a few moments, after which dose of rapidly 
asphyxiating poison gas the troublesome occupants of 
the subterranean residence are never seen again. In the 
early days of the settlement of Walworth County, as in 
many other parts of the country, the woodchuck was 
regularly hunted for the purpose of making shoestrings 
from its hide, for which purpose it was commonly reputed 

[107] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

to be the toughest and most durable material available. 
A few years ago a discussion having arisen among the 
amateur naturalists of the country as to whether a wood- 
chuck could climb trees, or ever did so, the question was 
definitely settled by a piece of unmistakable evidence 
from Walworth County. Professor Edwin B. Frost, of 
the staflF of the Yerkes Observatory, having one day the 
good fortune to discover one of the animals up in the 
crotch of a sizable tree near the Observatory grounds, had 
the creature guarded and compelled to hold its lofty 
position until a camera could be brought, when a successful 
snapshot made a permanent record of the performance, 
and its subsequent publication in one of the outdoor 
magazines of the country conclusively determined the 
debate in the affirmative. 

Squirrels, of both the gray and the "fox" varieties, are 
common wherever there is sufficient standing timber to give 
them ample cover. They are even sufficiently abundant 
in the southern portion of the county to require that the 
wooden poles supporting electric high-voltage power lines 
be sheathed with tin at the power portion, to prevent the 
animals from climbing the poles and short-circuiting the 
wires, with widely disastrous results, as happened on 
several occasions before the adoption of this device. 

But if the remaining fauna of the Lake Geneva hills 
and woods are comparatively few in number, the presence 
of wonderful native birds in great numbers and notable 
variety more than make up for any deficiency of other 
wild life. The vicinity of the lakes of Walworth County 
is one of the "bird paradise" portions of North America. 
Each fall and spring bring the water fowl to every lake 

[io8] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and swamp. The great Canada geese often spend the 
entire winter on the Lake, if they can find open water 
well out of rifle shot from the shore. Long, arrowy- 
flocks of ducks come by night and stop to feed by day. 
Immense numbers of coots or "mud hens" at times fairly 
blacken the waters of Lake Como, and these, once scorned 
by the duck hunter, have in recent years become a game 
bird, recognized as such alike by the legislator, the gunner, 
and the chef. Recent protective game legislation, espe- 
cially the Federal Migratory Bird Act, has done much 
to preserve and even markedly to increase the numbers 
of the game water fowl which annually traverse the 
Mississippi Valley. A century ago, as at the time of the 
coming of the white man to the Lake country, the number 
of the ducks, geese, and swans at the time of their semi- 
annual migrations was such as to be almost beyond the 
conception of the modern hunter. In the fall of 1830 a 
traveler on the Wolf River, stopping to make camp 
between lakes Butte des Morts and Poygan, noting the 
Indians shooting teal among the wild-rice beds, handed an 
Indian a flintlock musket and some ammunition and 
told him to bring back some ducks for supper, and in 
one hour's time the red man returned with fifty birds! 

As for song birds, of all the famous and beautiful 
singers of North America, only the southern mocking 
birds remain unheard in the annual chorus that wakes 
with every springtime sunrise over the Geneva hills, and 
continues daily until well into the summer's heat. Even 
the beautiful " Kentucky cardinal," long considered almost 
wholly a bird of the states south of the Mason and Dixon 
line, has in the last half-dozen years invaded Wisconsin, 

[109] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and has become, if still of occasional occurrence only, yet 
unmistakably an all-the-year resident in such quarters as 
he has selected as meeting his fancy. A dozen points in 
the southeastern counties claim his presence through the 
year. Several pairs have adopted the beautiful city parks 
of Milwaukee as their homes and have learned the city 
birds' fashion of feeding at the bird trays that many city 
homes place on lawns or at window ledges for the winter- 
time residents or for the squirrels that like the same edibles 
quite as well. A male cardinal having been seen several 
times along the north shore of Lake Geneva a few years 
ago, an owner of one of the beautiful residences in the 
vicinity went to the trouble of importing a female and 
placed her in an outdoor cage to make the acquaintance 
of the lone Kentuckian. Later, on her release, the pair 
promptly went to housekeeping, and they and their 
descendants are believed to be the several pairs that are 
now to be found in the surrounding woods. 

In the spring of 1922, in the months of April and May, 
the following varieties of birds were noted along the north 
shore of the Lake and at the points between Williams 
Bay and Delavan Inlet by four observers, who joined 
forces for the purpose of noting the birds' arrival: 

Swan American merganser 

Canada goose Pied grebe 

White goose Coot 

Mallard duck Large white gull 

Red-headed duck Franklin's gull 

Bluebill duck Common tern 

Canvasback duck Least tern 

Pintail duck Black tern 

Blue-winged teal Virginia rail 

[no] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



Yellow rail 

Carolina rail 

King rail 

Cormorant 

Loon 

Blue heron 

Little green heron 

American bittern 

Least bittern 

Killdeer plover 

Jacksnipe 

Spotted sandpiper 

Pectoral sandpiper 

Least sandpiper 

Kingfisher 

Junco 

Purple grackle 

Red-winged blackbird 

Yellow-headed blackbird 

Cowbird 

Bobolink 

Baltimore oriole 

Orchard oriole 

Golden-winged woodpecker 

Red-headed woodpecker 

Hairy woodpecker 

Yellow-bellied woodpecker 

Downy woodpecker 

White-bellied nuthatch 

Brown creeper 

Chickadee 

Chewink 

Chimney swift 

Martin 

Barn swallow 

Bank swallow 



Eaves swallow 

Robin 

Hermit thrush 

Wood thrush 

Brown thrush 

Olive-backed thrush 

Catbird 

Bluebird 

Indigo bunting 

American goldfinch 

Purple finch 

Bluejay 

Crow 

Loggerhead shrike 

Red-tailed hawk 

Cooper's hawk 

Sparrow hawk 

Screech owl 

Kingbird 

Great-crested flycatcher 

Traill's flycatcher 

Phoebe 

Wood pewee 

Ruby-crowned kinglet 

Golden-crowned kinglet 

House wren 

Long-billed marsh wren 

Redstart 

Scarlet tanager 

Mourning dove 

Yellow warbler 

Blackburnian warbler 

Black-throated green warbler 

Black-and-white warbler 

Myrtle warbler 

Maryland yellowthroat 



[III] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Horned lark Cardinal grosbeak 

Meadow lark Rose-breasted grosbeak 

Western meadowlark Yellow-throated vireo 

Dickcissel Blue-headed vireo 

White-throated sparrow Red-eyed vireo 

Swamp sparrow Ovenbird 

Grasshopper sparrow Cedar waxwing 

Vesper sparrow Bohemian waxwing 

White-crowned sparrow Yellow-billed cuckoo 

Song sparrow Humming bird 

Fox sparrow Quail 

English sparrow Whippoorwill 

Field sparrow Nighthawk 

It is quite possible that more experienced, well- 
informed, and scientific observers would have found in 
the same territory and at the same time twenty or thirty 
more varieties. 

Of the ii6 noted, all may rightly be considered among 
the common birds of the Middle West, either as residents 
or migrant visitors, except the swans, cormorants, western 
meadowlarks, cardinals, and yellow-headed blackbirds. 
But where else can one find an area of not over a half- 
dozen square miles of lakes, swamps, farms, and woodlands, 
in which the bird lover may expect to find in its season 
every bird that could possibly be expected in that part of 
the continent, and, in addition, several whose proverbial 
haunts lie elsewhere but who choose to come to Lake 
Geneva for their homes ? Some of the latter, like the 
yellow-headed blackbird, are known in no other nearby 
locality, and yet have been seen in one spot annually 
for almost half a century. In the case of the above- 
mentioned blackbird this favorite haunt consists of the 

[112] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



marshes and reed beds at the junction of Delavan Inlet 
and the Lake. 

The cormorants, too, were considered very rare by old 
residents of the Geneva and Delavan neighborhoods. 
Some of them, indeed, had never seen these curious and 
ungainly water fowl before. The flock noted, some two 
dozen in number, remained at Delavan Inlet for two 
weeks before resuming their northward way. 

The Canada geese and their smaller companions, the 
white geese, gathered in numbers amounting to many 
hundreds, perhaps thousands, in the middle of Lake 
Geneva, early in the year. Spending the nights there, 
their clangorous honking could be heard at all hours of 
the darkness, and with the dawn their heavy-winged 
battalions moved out in long lines to favorite feeding- 
fields. At a little after sunset these flocks would be seen 
returning, their clanging calls sounding from high up in 
the air and increasing as they approached the Lake, 
when with set wings the members of the flocks broke 
their lines and seemed to tumble and side-slip downward 
to join their companions resting on the water. Many a 
time the line of descent of these great flocks of geese and 
ducks would carry them so low over the hilltops about the 
Lake that the fortunately posted observer could see every 
marking of the birds. Indeed, on occasions in the hunting 
season, it has happened that some tireless and ingenious 
devotee of the gun has betaken himself to the roof of some 
hilltop residence which he has observed to be in the usual 
line of flight, and has been rewarded by dropping a bird 
or two as they have slanted sharply down over his head 
to the Lake below. 

[113] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

But the song birds, their numbers, and their songs! 
How shall one begin to do accurate justice to their variety, 
the charm of their presence, and the vigor of their activi- 
ties, and to the ceaseless chorus of their music, from the 
arrival of the first robin in March, or the prompt house- 
keeping of the horned lark, the earliest nester of them all, 
to the completion of their domestic duties and the achieved 
independence of their first broods in midsummer ? Before 
the first buds are in evidence on the leafing trees, the robins 
and bluebirds have made selection of their homes and are 
hard at work collecting twigs, dead grasses, and the 
welcome findings of string or horsehair, for their nests in 
the central crotch of some maple tree or under the eaves 
of some summer home whose human tenants will not 
arrive till perhaps the second brood has been hatched. 
Every tree has its nest, sometimes several. Every wooded 
ravine has its dozen varieties of birds. Every roadside 
fence-corner brush heap has its bustling pair of brown 
thrashers darting into concealment as the motorist roars 
past. Every tall bush has its busy catbirds, stopping 
long enough now and then to mimic every other singer 
within hearing. Every dead stub has its woodpeckers' 
holes. Every farm fence seems to have its individual 
kingbird, now darting into the air to capture passing 
insects and now dashing off in eager pursuit of a bandit 
hawk or even of golden-wing woodpeckers if they venture 
too near the pugnacious little sentinel's chosen post. 
Every tree trunk is searched inch by inch by chickadee 
or nuthatch, the only birds to whom it makes no difference 
whether their bug hunt is conducted right side up or 
upside down. Every barnyard has its eaves-colony of 

[114] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

swallows. Every meadow and farmyard is swept by 
the keen eyes of the hawks who daily scour a selected 
territory — often at almost exactly the same hour of every 
day — in search of field mice or straying little chicks, 
sometimes coming to a sudden end, memorialized by the 
pair of wings afiixed to the barn door, when straying 
within range of the unseen farm boy's shotgun. 

It has been aptly commented that the song period of the 
birds is invariably limited to what may be called the 
altruistic portion of their annual cycle. The successive 
times of courtship, mating, incubation, and feeding of 
each brood is accompanied from first to last by the best 
efforts of each songster, from the robin's "Cheerily, 
cheerily," to the brown thrasher's flood of wonderful 
double notes rippling from the topmost branch of the 
tallest tree near his home. But with the flight of the last 
nestling and the end of the domestic season, when family 
interests are over and the parent birds have no tasks 
beyond those of finding food for themselves, songs cease 
as if without incentive, and the midsummer silence sets 
in with the moulting season, so that many a summer 
visitor would never guess how many birds there are in 
the woods that a few weeks ago were ringing with song 
from sunrise to sunset. 

The alert observer of the birds during the nesting 
season is sure to be rewarded with instances of their 
quaint ways at every turn. For four successive years a 
pair of robins — almost certainly the same — built their 
nests in the shelter of a garage on one of the estates on 
the north shore of the Lake. One year it was placed on 
a horizontal length of stovepipe, the next year on a 

[115I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

ceiling beam, the third year over the sHding door, and one 
year it was placed on a shelf beside the wash rack and not 
3 feet from where the big limousine stood when in the 
garage, the noise and action of the cars and the continual 
passing and repassing of people seeming in no way to 
disturb the busy parents or to affect the ever hungry 
nestlings. One pair of wrens built a nest inside a child's- 
size tin watering-pot that hung on a nail not 3 feet from 
a kitchen door. Another pair stuffed their building 
material into the pocket of a pair of overalls which they 
found hanging on a clothesline, whose owner interestedly 
allowed them to continue to hang in disuse till the tiny 
family had grown and flown away. Several pairs of 
red-headed woodpeckers were so desperately possessed 
to drill their way into the attic of one home, boring 
through the siding under the eaves, that nothing sufficed 
to stop their efforts, and finally the owner of the house — 
first conscientiously informing the state authorities that 
he was resolved to protect his property against damage 
from wild creatures — borrowed a shotgun and executed 
all the determined breakers-in! Another pair of wood- 
peckers decided that a certain little church offered su- 
perior domestic attractions, and worked so steadily at 
hammering through some resounding boards that during 
the sermon-time one of the church officers stationed him- 
self outside the building with handfuls of pebbles to en- 
force a half-hour's suspension of the machine-gun-like 
rattle of the tireless pair! 

A Chicago woman, deeply interested and well versed 
in bird ways, coming early one summer to a cottage on 
Conference Point, found a baby Baltimore oriole that, 

[116] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

hardly more than hatched, had had the misfortune to fall 
from its pendent cradle. Picking the tiny creature up 
and taking it home, she endeavored to keep it alive by 
feeding it from a fountain-pen filler. The nestling re- 
sponded to this devoted care so promptly that it swiftly 
grew fat and strong, and not only developed into a beauti- 
ful specimen of the oriole's most gorgeous color, but 
became a firm attache of the cottage, the resident family, 
and their generous food supply placed out for its benefit. 
It grew so tame that, while free to roam the woods as it 
did, it never went too far away to hear a meal-time call, 
a whistle, or its name of "Baby," at either of which 
summons it would fly down from some tree top to sit on 
its mistress* finger or ride on her shoulder about the 
cottage or the grounds. 

The regularity of the arrival of the birds each spring 
is a never failing source of interest and wonder to the 
alert and experienced observer who has the good fortune 
to live near the Lake sufficiently early in the year to note 
the coming of each species. The northbound water fowl 
may be the first to appear in stretches of open water 
amid the melting ice, and the robin and the purple grackle 
are in no way intimidated by the snow squalls of March 
or even February. But the horned lark is the earliest 
nest-builder and its eggs may be found in their ground 
nest in some meadow before the new grass has begun to 
tint the fields with the ever welcome assurance that spring 
is at the doors. The experienced student of bird ways, 
watching and listening for the latest arrival, last year's 
notebook in hand, may say: "Today is the fifth of May. 
Tomorrow the oriole and the bobolink ought to be here." 

[117] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

And the chances are that with the next morning's sunrise 
the expected notes will be heard from tree, bush, or garden, 
teUing of the unfailing regularity with which the tiny 
travelers up from the Gulf states or from their South 
American winter resort keep to the centuries-old schedule 
of their kind. One such notebook of twenty-five years* 
annual records shows that for that time the various vari- 
eties of birds have varied hardly more than twenty-four 
hours each year in the date of their dropping from the 
night's long flight to begin their mating and nesting on 
the hills about the Lake, or, in the case of transients who 
nest farther north, to put in a few hours of vigorous feed- 
ing in preparation for the resumption of their journey 
toward the Arctic Circle. 

Those who have thus studied the avi-fauna of Geneva 
and its neighborhood for many years confidently believe 
that there are many more birds in its woods and fields 
today, and more with each year, than for many years 
past. This is probably true of at least the migrant 
varieties. Of course the upland game birds which once 
existed around the Lake in great numbers have vanished, 
as everywhere, before the transformation of their haunts 
into the farms and villages of a modern civilization. The 
once-famous sky-darkening flocks of the passenger pigeon, 
whose incredible numbers as they settled on the trees 
about the Lake furnished literal gorgings on their flesh 
for every Indian lodge, are now no more than tales dimly 
remembered by the oldest inhabitant as having been told 
him by his grandfather. The stalking figures of the great 
sand-hill cranes have not been seen on any upland wheat 
field of Walworth County for almost half a century. 

[ii8] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

The last recorded great flock of big, bronze, wild turkeys, 
once the common reward of the skilful hunter, Indian or 
early settler, throughout all the region, consisted of thirty 
of these birds seen, and some of their number bagged, 
near the hamlet of Spring Prairie, in 1838. The writer 
saw coveys of partridges, and heard them "drumming," 
in the woods of the north shore in 1884, and single birds 
were met with along the old trail between Conference 
Point and the Yerkes Observatory in 1897; but these 
were the last of their kind. Now and then a woodcock 
is seen making its curious summer-evening flight at dusk 
near some likely lake-shore nesting-place. A few coveys 
of prairie chickens linger on farms in the outlying corners 
of the county farthest from towns and railroads, occasion- 
ally startling the hunter with their roaring rise awing 
as he crosses some stubble on autumnal rabbit hunts. 
Quail are still seen in midsummer, scurrying across country 
roads ahead of the speeding motor, and a few are bagged 
each fall by hunters famihar with their haunts. 

All the birds, however, that come beneath the 
sheltering wings of the mentioned Migratory Bird Act, 
seem to have responded to the thoughtful interest and 
offered protection of the bird lovers, naturalists, and 
sportsmen alike, of the United States and Canada. As 
intimated, the semi-annual flights of ducks and geese are 
noticeably larger than for some years before. Especially 
the numbers of the songsters show that the spread of 
public protection, and perhaps of education and intel- 
ligence as to their ways, their beauty, interest, and value, 
are already producing the hoped-for result of bringing 
more birds to every lawn and hedgerow and woodland 

[119] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

with each spring than either the naturalist or the schoolboy 
had been accustomed to note. With such happy results 
accompanying even increasingly intensive agricultural 
cultivation and the expansion of villages and towns into 
the surrounding countrysides, Lake Geneva will remain 
the bird paradise of the Middle West for all the generations 
of bird lovers who will yet spend their happiest hours 
about its shores. 



[120] 



CHAPTER VII 
THE YERKES OBSERVATORY 

No visitor to the Lake Geneva neighborhood can fail 
to note the enormous khaki-colored dome that looms 
high above the trees crowning the summit of the hills on 
the northwestern shore of the Lake. Visible for half a 
dozen miles or more in every direction, it dominates the 
landscape and holds the eye of the spectator over a large 
part of even all Walworth County itself. Glittering like 
gold in the level rays of the rising sun or silhouetted 
against some flaming sunset or somber beneath the 
leaden skies of an overcast day, it forms one of the most 
striking objects to be seen anywhere in America. Nor, 
at any season of the year, does it give the impression of 
any incongruity in its presence in the view. Embowered 
amid the flowering trees and shrubs at its base in spring, 
standing out against the deep green foliage of midsum- 
mer, solemn above the brown and leafless forests of 
autumn or silently majestic across the great and quiet 
whiteness of winter's deepest snows, it has none of the 
frequent intrusiveness upon the eye of some others of 
man's works — ugly factories and smoke-streaming chim- 
neys — but seems as much in place as the hill it crowns 
and nobly significant of man's upward reach toward the 
firmament whose secrets it seeks to solve. Upon nearer 
approach it is, if possible, even more impressive and fasci- 
nating, with the striking Romanesque architecture of the 
great building, the smaller twin companion domes, and 
the rich beauty of the landscape setting of its grounds. 

[121] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

It was conceived in 1892 in the mind of Professor 
George E. Hale, of the Department of Astronomy of the 
University of Chicago, as a result of an opportunity to 
purchase the great glass which is its chief treasure. 
Mr. Charles T. Yerkes, of Chicago, generously made the 
financing of the undertaking possible, and the building 
was begun in 1895 and opened for its special lines of 
scientific pursuit in October, 1897. Its location was the 
result of a survey of more than twenty suggested places 
in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and was 
selected because of its freedom from the smoke, dust, and 
disturbance of cities, and because of the ascertained and 
notable clearness of the atmosphere during the greater 
portion of the year. Its site, with ^2 acres of surrounding 
land, was given by Mr. John Johnston, Jr. The Trustees 
of the University have since increased the property to 
70 acres, with a lake frontage of 550 feet, where a pier 
for steamers is maintained in summer. The building 
stands 190 feet above the level of the Lake, and 1,050 feet 
above sea-level. Its geographical position, as determined 
by officers of the United States Coast and Geodetic Sur- 
vey is: Latitude, 42°34'i 2^.64; Longitude, 5'^54"i3!24 
west of Greenwich. The grounds are 4 miles north of 
the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, a mile from the post- 
office of the beautiful little village of Williams Bay, 
and a mile and a quarter from the Chicago and North 
Western Railway station, the terminus of a branch, 76 
miles from Chicago. The architect of the great building 
was Mr. Henry Ives Cobb, and the surrounding land- 
scape plan was designed by Olmstead Brothers of Brook- 
line, Massachusetts. 

[122] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The great telescope itself, which, by virtue of its 
famous 40-inch object glass, is the largest refracting 
telescope in the world, is of course housed beneath the 
great dome, 90 feet in diameter. The opening in the 
dome through which the sky is observed is 1 1 feet wide 
and is closed by shutters 85 feet long from the base 
of the dome to its top. The telescope is 61 feet long, its 
tube weighing 6 tons, or, with all its moving parts, 
20 tons in all. For ready accessibility in its every 
possible position there is provided a rising floor, designed 
and constructed by Warner and Swazey, 75 feet in 
diameter and weighing 37I tons. Every part of the 
observing room, dome, shutters, telescope, and floor, is 
movable by hand and by powerful electric motors. The 
driving clock by which the telescope is made to follow 
the stars is of course unique in its size and keeps the 
cross-hairs of the great instrument in line with a particu- 
lar star under observation with an accuracy that seems 
to the lay mind the last degree of mechanical perfection. 

The telescope is in use in the study of the sun by day 
and of the stars by night during practically every clear 
hour of the entire year. Its chief use is for the photog- 
raphy, either of celestial objects themselves, or of their 
spectra, in the taking of those photographs from whose 
measurements, rather than by dependence on the eye 
of the observer alone, as formerly, the facts about the 
stellar universe are now chiefly determined. More than 
twenty-five thousand such photographs have been taken 
with the instrument since its erection. 

Next to the great dome itself, the two smaller domes 
attract the visitor's attention. Of these, that at the 

[123] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

southeast houses a reflecting telescope 2 feet in diam- 
eter, in some respects as powerful as the great 40-inch 
itself. Every part of this reflecting telescope was made 
in the Observatory itself. The northeast dome contains 
another refracting telescope, of 12 inches diameter, the 
gift of Messrs. William E. and George E. Hale, which 
was formerly at their residence and private observatory 
in Chicago. On the main roof is located a Brashear 
comet-seeker telescope of 6 inches aperture. Between 
the smaller domes, with suitable openings in the roof, 
is a transit instrument of 3 inches diameter. Many 
other instruments for observation or measurement 
purposes are housed within the main building and used 
in the processes of its astronomical and meteorological 
departments and studies. At the east of the Observa- 
tory grounds is located the complete power-house which 
furnishes light, heat, and power for the entire building 
and its varied needs and purposes, and which was a 
part of the original gift of Mr. Yerkes. 

South of the main building of the Observatory there 
stands a small dome-crowned building which houses a 
special instrument, the Bruce photographic telescope, 
given in 1897 by Miss Catherine W. Bruce, of New York, 
who presented the sum of $7,000 for the construction of 
a telescope especially designed for the photography of 
the large areas and extended objects in the sky, partic- 
ularly the Milky Way and comets. In this field Mr. 
Edward E. Barnard of the Observatory's staff has been 
the most successful pioneer, and by him the instrument 
is in constant use. The lo-inch telescope was designed 
by Brashear, and its special mounting was built by Warner 

[124] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and Swazey. It has also a 6J-inch Voigtlander "doub- 
let" and a 5-inch visual guiding glass. Many wonder- 
ful and beautiful photographs of the Milky Way have 
been obtained with this instrument by Mr. Barnard. Of 
the Morehouse Comet of 1908 he secured no less than 
350 most valuable negatives. 

Visitors to the Observatory so often ask as to the cost 
of this, one of the most famous, and in its way unique, 
scientific institutions in the world, that a brief statement 
may be made. The land originally given was valued 
at $30,000. The cost of the completed object glass of the 
great reflector was |66,ooo; of the telescope mounting 
itself, $55,000; of the dome and rising floor, $45,000; 
and of the remainder of the Observatory building, includ- 
ing the southeast dome and the power-house and its 
equipment, about $150,000. The instrument and its 
equipment of the Kenwood Observatory, the mentioned 
gift of Mr. William E. Hale and his son, were valued at 
$38,000. The Bruce telescope and building cost about 
$8,000. To date something over $15,000 has been spent 
on grading, improving, and planting the grounds about 
the institution. 

It is interesting to note that in the scientific, especially 
of course the astronomical, world today, the great tele- 
scope of the Observatory is so widely known and recog- 
nized as the only instrument of its particular type, size, 
and power, that in scientific papers, reports, and com- 
parisons, it is often alluded to, not by its full name or 
that of its Observatory and its location, but simply as 
''the 40-inch," it being understood that every informed 
reader will know what instrument is alluded to. 

[125] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Among the most notable achievements and discover- 
ies in astronomical science made possible by the equip- 
ment of the Observatory and effected by those who are 
or have been members of its staff are such definite addi- 
tions to the world's knowledge as, first in importance 
perhaps, the great development of the spectroheliograph, 
by George E. Hale and Ferdinand Ellerman, for use in 
the study of the surface of the sun. In 1901, Mr. G. W. 
Ritchey demonstrated that the great telescope, origi- 
nally designed solely for use with the eye, except as the 
spectroscope is concerned, could be made one of the 
most efficient instruments in the world for precise pho- 
tographic work. This was done by the use of a yellow 
filter, placed before the photographic plate, which trans- 
mitted only those rays to which the eye is most sensitive, 
and for which the object glass was figured. This dis- 
covery inaugurated a new use for the great telescope 
and opened a field of service for visual telescopes which 
had not been originally anticipated. Mr. Ritchey was 
also the constructor of the 2-foot reflecting telescope, 
with which he succeeded in taking many of the finest 
photographs of stellar nebulae that have ever been made. 
The great work of the late S. W. Burnham, in his collec- 
tion of notable photographs of the Milky Way, was 
begun at the Observatory and is continued today by 
Mr. Barnard. The remarkable achievement of measur- 
ing the amount of heat received from individual stars was 
first carried out here by Mr. E. F. Nichols in 1898 and 
1900. For this purpose there was used a "radiometer," 
built at the Observatory especially for this work, of such 
sensitiveness that it measured the heat received at a 

[126] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

distance of 2,000 feet from a human face, and similarly- 
recorded the amount of heat received from a lighted 
candle placed at a distance of 4,500 feet from the 
instrument! 

The constant use of the telescopes for scientific 
purposes — for they are in use during practically every 
clear hour by day or by night throughout the entire 
year — makes it impossible for permission to be given to 
visitors to look through these. Indeed, were such per- 
mission to be extended, little time would remain for any 
other use of the instruments, for during the year, especi- 
ally of course during the summer and vacation seasons, 
there are often not less than twelve thousand visitors 
to the famous building. Opportunity is given, however, 
for all who wish to do so to inspect the Observatory and 
the great refractor, on Saturdays, from June i to Sep- 
tember 13, between half-past one and half-past four in 
the afternoon; and during the rest of the year between 
the hours of ten and twelve on Saturday mornings. On 
these occasions a member of the staff demonstrates the 
operation of the large telescope and explains the work 
of the Observatory. Many interesting and wonderful 
astronomical photographs are displayed in the corridors 
of the building for the benefit of visitors. 

Those who know most intimately the Observatory, 
whether they are in the profession of astronomical 
research or in other lines of life, have long since come to 
recognize that the spirit of the institution, in its scientific 
pursuits or its contact with the rest of the world, has 
become little other than the embodiment of the character 
of the present head of its staff. Originally conceived, as 

[127] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

has been said, by Professor George E. Hale, who was its 
director until becoming the head of the Mount Wilson 
Observatory in 1905, he was succeeded in office by Edwin 
B. Frost, then professor of astrophysics, who has been 
its director ever since. Of his accomplishments in the 
sphere of his own specialty it is a sufficient comment 
that in 191 2 he was invited to England by the Univer- 
sity of Cambridge, to receive in person the distinction of 
an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. With a mind 
that is an encyclopedia of scientific knowledge, of 
brilliant and accurate intellectual activity, interested in 
many lines of natural phenomena and life — perhaps 
especially in the practical aspects of American social 
progress — to a wide circle of American intellect he is as 
deeply loved for his geniality and friendship as he is 
admired for his wide information and his notable con- 
tributions to the world's treasury of modern scientific 
data. 

The staff of the Observatory is constituted as follows 
(1922): 

Edwin B. Frost, Professor of Astrophysics and Director. 
Edward E. Barnard, Professor of Practical Astronomy. 
John A. Parkhurst, Associate Professor of Practical Astronomy. 
Storrs B. Barrett, Assistant Professor of Astrophysics, also Sec- 
retary and Librarian of the Observatory. 

George Van Biesbroeck, Assistant Professor of Practical Astronomy. 

Oliver J. Lee, Instructor in Practical Astronomy. 

Otto Struve, Assistant in Stellar Spectroscopy. 

Mary R. Calvert, Computer. 

Florence B. Lee, Office Secretary. 

Margaret Van Biesbroeck, Assistant Librarian. 

George C. Blakslee, Photographer. 

[128] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Frank R. Sullivan, Engineer in charge of the 40-inch telescope. 
Stephen A. Stamm, Instrument-maker. 
Henry M. Foote, Carpenter and Supervisor of Building. 
Diedrich J. Oetjen, Engineer at Power-house. 

Among the thousands of interested visitors who every 
year enter the beautiful doors of the great Observatory, 
it sometimes happens that there are those of a particu- 
larly critical bent of mind, and who by virtue of its 
dubious possession consider themselves the strictly 
"practical" of the human race, who are not long in 
coming out with the question: "Of what use is all this ? 
Granted, that these instruments are all very wonder- 
ful — they are certainly costly enough! — but of what 
value are they ? How is mankind in general benefited 
by this great building and its contents, and this institu- 
tion and what is done here .^ It must be all very nice 
for these scientifically inclined and studious gentlemen 
to live here, and in similar institutions, the year 'round, 
and to enjoy themselves in the study of the stars; but to 
what extent, if any, does their work benefit the world 
without and their fellows and mankind at large ? Do 
they, as the saying is, 'pull more than their own weight 
in the boat,' in which all humanity may be said to ride, 
and upon whose progress by the joint labors of its occu- 
pants the advancement of the race depends ? To be 
blunt: Are there any sternly practical, tangible, earthly, 
doUars-and-cents values in these astronomical pursuits 
for the rest of the world of hard-working men and 
women ?" 

The cynic is tempted to reply, with more accuracy 
than courtesy, that if this type of mind had more educa- 

[129] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

tion, information, and a resultant wider grasp of the 
things open to the human mind on this mundane sphere, 
it would not be moved to this particular example of its 
favorite challenge of human pursuits other than its own, 
whatever that may be. Then, however, it would cease 
to be what it is, and would be less critical of its fellows 
and their ways, and mankind would be minus one strik- 
ing illustration of the proverb that "It takes all kinds of 
people to make a world." But it exists and it asks its 
questions, and perhaps to reply in kindly and accurate 
fashion and to lift it out of its status quo ante^ and to let 
it depart the richer for the new knowledge, is not the 
least of the educative privileges of the wise and kindly 
men who live and move and have their being in the great 
institution, and whose uplifted eyes and thoughts bring 
many a celestial reality down to bless and enrich the rest 
of us, and to lift our minds some little way along the 
upward path in which they are so often the pioneers of 
human progress. 

Among many other practicalities for whose possession 
mankind is the richer and the better off solely by virtue 
of our great astronomical institutions and the men who 
give their lives to the work conducted therein, three may 
be indicated. 

First is of course the one great pursuit of the entire 
world of science, the study of the laws governing the 
universe, and the endeavor to discover — "here a little 
and there a little, as saith the Prophet Isaiah" — what 
those laws are, and how they operate, and what is their 
added testimony to the great Source of all law, behind, 
and in, and through it all. 

[130] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

To which first comment our "sternly practical" 
interrogator may reply, impatiently: "That's all very 
well; and it may be so, and it sounds a good deal like 
our minister's sermons to me, but just how does a 
place like this, and costly instruments like these, and 
scientists who do what these men do — how do these 
benefit the rest of us hard-working chaps during our own 
particular busy and hustling six days in the week ?" 

Whereupon we may ask him plainly, and in phrase- 
ology that he can understand, if in his business, time is 
worth anything to him^ and knowing always exactly 
what time it is, and when the factory whistle should 
blow, and when trains go, and mails and shipments, and 
when appointments and engagements are to be kept, 
and when banks open or close, and when legal dates and 
hours and contract periods begin or end ? If so, then 
he, and with him the whole world of business and manu- 
facture and finance and law, would and could never know 
exactly what time it is, if it were not for our students of 
the stars. Somewhere some astronomer watches at the 
eyepiece of his telescope for a certain star to touch the 
cross-hairs of his instrument, when his waiting, trained, 
poised finger touches a button and correctly sets an 
automatic clock; and presently, at the appointed and 
expected hour, the message will be flashed the world 
around — by radio, nowadays — that it is exactly such and 
such an hour by the mighty, the eternal, the only infallible 
Clock of the Universe. And lo, every clock and watch 
on earth is, or may be, set accordingly, and trains run 
and whistles blow and banks open and close, and human 
affairs may run regularly and accurately and dependably 

[131] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

once more because everyone knows, or may know, exactly 
"what time it is"! 

Or perhaps location, somewhere on the earth's sur- 
face, is worth something to our "practical" brother. It 
may be of some importance and value in his affairs to 
know exactly where his farm is, or his city property, and 
the limits, corner stakes, and boundaries of rural acres, 
or the feet of frontage on the Avenue, or the all-but- 
priceless inches on Michigan Boulevard or Broadway 
itself. The chances are that it is of a degree of interest 
measurable in dollars and cents in his bank account to 
know where are the exact bounds of his coal mine prop- 
erty, or his oil leases, or what is the hourly position of 
the vessels sailing the seas with their freights for his 
warehouses. When the boundary line between the 
states of Illinois and Wisconsin was surveyed for the 
first time, in 1827, by the crude, perhaps magnetic- 
compass, perhaps rule-of-thumb methods common on 
the frontier in those days, instead of being laid out exactly 
east and west from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi 
River, as was the intention and the instruction of the 
Congress of the United States, the surveyors in charge 
actually got their work so "on the bias" that the state 
line is half a mile from where it ought to be at one end 
and three-quarters of a mile "off" at the other! Per- 
haps our practically inclined critic would approve of 
measurements of a greater exactness than that, in these 
modern times and conditions in which he and we live 
and buy and sell! The chances are, he would! And 
the only way in which the absolutely exact location of 
any spot on the surface of the earth may be determined 

[132] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

is by working out, from the data given us by the stars, 
the latitude and longitude of the ends of some earthly 
base line, and its relation to the true north, and then 
referring to that determined location the position of the 
area, acre, foot, or inch, the exact situation of which is 
worth something to someone! 

Q.E.D., my dear sir! Or, "in the language of the 
street," if Law and Time and Place are worth anything 
to you, Mr. Practical Man, then that is what places like 
the mighty Observatory on Geneva's hills are for, 
wherewith to benefit mankind. So stop your car, or at 
least slow down, the next time you drive that way, and 
give it a respectful and appreciative glance as you go 
by, and realize that such are the things that it means 
to yoiil 



[133] 



CHAPTER VIII 
MOTOR ROUTES TO LAKE GENEVA 

In an article on the scenic beauties of the United States, 
in one of the popular magazines, a recent writer com- 
ments: 

The three most beautiful highways between larger cities of the 
country are, first, the drive from Albany to New York along the east 
shore of the Hudson River; second, the almost uninterrupted suburban 
boulevard from Philadelphia to Baltimore and Washington; and third, 
the hundred miles along the western shore of Lake Michigan's inland 
sea, from Milwaukee to Chicago. 

This last notable route, its smooth concrete winding 
from Wisconsin's largest city through the residence and 
factory districts of Racine and Kenosha to the Illinois line, 
is continued southward by the largely fair and occasion- 
ally excellent boulevards of Chicago's famous residence 
suburbs, its "Gold Coast," and Lincoln Park. The 
motorist to Lake Geneva from either end of the line may 
allow himself a glimpse of its charms at the cost of per- 
haps another hour on the way and another gallon or so 
of gasoline. And what are a Uttle "gas" and a Httle 
time to the motorist who cares, not about the shortest 
route or the shortest time, but about the interesting 
cities, beautiful homes, long views of the blue lake beside 
the way, and good concrete to drive upon ? 

To go to Lake Geneva thus, the tourist from Milwaukee 
takes Wisconsin State Highway No. 17 to Racine, or on to 
Kenosha if he prefers. At Racine he turns west on No. 20, 
whose concrete takes him to Burlington, whence 12 miles 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

of hard gravel roads on Route 36 will put him in the 
town of Lake Geneva. 

If coming from Chicago, he keeps to Sheridan Road 
to Kenosha, or Racine, 5 miles farther north, if he 
likes. From Kenosha, Highway 50 will take him many- 
miles on his way, though as its western portion is under 
construction he will be forced to make a southward detour 
before reaching the Lake. 

For shorter routes from Milwaukee there are several 
choices, each growing more in favor every year as the 
amount of concrete is added to each season. High- 
way No. 36 leads past Forest Home Cemetery, taking 
the Loomis Road through Rochester and Waterford to 
Burlington, whence No. 2^ leads to Geneva. Just south 
of the little village of Rochester there are some par- 
ticularly beautiful views of the clear, mirroring, willow- 
shaded reaches of the Fox River, as it winds through the 
meadows beside the road, strikingly reminding one of the 
upper Thames, or of Tennyson's lines on "the brim- 
ming river." 

A second much traveled route from Milwaukee begins 
by following National Avenue to its western terminus, 
where it merges into the concrete of Highway 61. This 
leads over the lofty hill known as "Prospect," from which 
there is an unusually far view, of Muskego and Wind 
lakes, to the southward. It is 16 miles from Milwaukee 
to Mukwonago, with 5 miles of broad concrete thence to 
East Troy. 

From the village square of East Troy — one of the oldest 
villages in southern Wisconsin and a tiny metropolis of 
trade for its neighborhood as far back as the forties — 

[136] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

one has a choice of roads to Geneva, depending on whether 
one wishes to reach its eastern or western end. A good 
country road running southward for 14 miles, through 
Spring Prairie and Springfield, and over two real hills 
between these, puts one in the town of Lake Geneva, at 
the eastern end of the Lake. Out of the west side of 
the town square of East Troy, Highway 61 continues 
southwestward for 11 miles to Elkhorn, the county seat 
of Walworth County, in which Lake Geneva lies. From 
here one may reach in a few moments more either Williams 
Bay, 6 miles south, on the northwestern shore of the Lake; 
and thence Fontana, at the head of the Lake, 3 miles 
farther; or Delavan Lake, 4 miles; or the town of Dela- 
van, continuing on Highway 61 from Elkhorn, 4 miles. 
A route from Milwaukee that is some 6 or 8 miles 
longer than either of the above, but which is well worth 
the time, consists in going out Grand Avenue, the Blue 
Mound Road, and the new broad concrete to Waukesha. 
Leaving Waukesha by the bridge over the Fox River at 
the west end of College Avenue, one turns south, keeping 
on the excellent country road that runs along the sides 
of the low hills on the west side of the river valley, from 
which there are for many miles striking views of the 
fertile valley of the Fox and its low, bordering hills. The 
splendid farms and great herds of dairy cattle that one 
sees along this road lead one easily to credit the local 
boast that there are more pure-bred cattle in Waukesha 
County than in any other county in the United States! 
Many shady spots beneath the over-arching trees that 
border this road in places afford tempting spots for way- 
side luncheons before one reaches Mukwonago. From the 

[137] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

latter village one goes on concrete to East Troy, and from 
there southward, as described above. 

A road that is a favorite with many Milwaukeeans who 
love its oak-wooded hillsides, consists in turning, just after 
leaving Waukesha, on a diagonal road southwestward, at 
the point marked as Highway 59, and following the 
markers through Genesee, North Prairie, Eagle, and 
Little Prairie, to the pretty little Lauderdale Lakes. Here 
No. 59 joins No. 12, leading south to Elkhorn, with the 
above-mentioned alternatives from there. 

If there are half a dozen different or slightly varying 
routes from Milwaukee to Lake Geneva, from Chicago 
there are twice as many. 

But alas for some of the roads of lUinois, as compared 
with what the State Highway Commission of Wisconsin 
has done! The neglected condition and inadequate or 
makeshift improvements of all too many of the needed 
and even much traveled roads of Illinois are almost 
unbelievable in this age of modern road-making. It 
is, of course, a condition that is gradually being improved, 
and will be bettered as fast as the authorities can do 
the work under present conditions. But it will be carried 
on only to the extent and in the manner in which the 
neighboring state is doing such work — and many other 
states as well or even better, of course — when the people 
of Illinois let their authorities know in unmistakable 
manner that what they want is a good-roads system 
throughout the state, and that, not at the end of another 
generation, but within a decade at the longest! 

As to the really good roads of Illinois, there are, so to 
put it, three groups. The largest consists, of course, of 

[138] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

the roadways and boulevard system of the city of Chicago, 
all of which are as a rule excellent, though portions of 
Sheridan Road and some other arteries leave something 
to be desired and to be improved on. 

The second group of excellent modern highways con- 
sists of the two routes between Chicago and St. Louis. 
One, the Dixie Highway, runs southward near the 
Indiana line to Danville and Marshall, where it turns 
southwestward across the state to the metropolis on the 
Missouri. The other lies through Joliet, Ottawa, Peoria, 
and Springfield, and so to St. Louis. Both are now 
completely concreted with the exception of strips through 
such towns as have not completed the pavement within 
their own limits. With these exceptions, the motorist 
northward or southward across the state may keep his 
wheels on concrete or on pavements equally good. 
Indeed, he may do this for as much farther north of 
Chicago as Green Bay, in Wisconsin, a total distance 
from that city to St. Louis of 580 miles, one of the longest 
stretches of perfect roadway in the United States, and 
one which is becoming increasingly popular as the motor- 
ing public learns of its good qualities and attractive, 
direct route. 

A third, shorter but most notable and exceedingly 
popular and constantly traveled road is the Illinois por- 
tion of the Lincoln Highway, across the northern part of 
the state, through Oak Park, Geneva (Illinois), De Kalb, 
Dixon, and on westward to the Mississippi River at Ful- 
ton, opposite Clinton, Iowa, a total of about 160 miles 
across the state. This fine road, which conveys a perfect 
stream of cars eastward and westward on every fair- 

[139] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

weathered day of the year, is almost perfectly level over 
the greater part of its course, and traverses the great 
corn belt of northern Illinois. If a motorist wants to 
see corn "as is corn," with fields not less striking in 
their way than the immense stretches of the wheat fields 
of the Dakotas, the Lincoln Highway will show it to him 
as almost no other portion of the country can do. 

Incidentally, all the foregoing roads to Chicago from 
the west and southwest carry annually their quota of the 
summertime travel to Lake Geneva. 

The longest fine drive from Chicago to the Lake is via 
Sheridan Road, through Lincoln Park and the north- 
ern suburbs, Evanston, Highland Park, Fort Sheridan, 
Lake Forest, Waukegan, and Zion City, to Kenosha or 
Racine and westward from either of these cities, as pre- 
viously mentioned. This route will call for approximately 
loo miles at the wheel, according to one's choice of Ken- 
osha or Racine as a turning-point westward, and in view 
of the detours as one approaches Geneva, owing to con- 
crete construction under way. 

The shortest route between Chicago and Lake Geneva 
is found by going out through Lake Zurich, Wauconda, 
Volo, McHenry, Richmond, and Genoa Junction, to the 
town of Geneva. But while this road will eventually be 
excellent and popular, it is at present rough and undesir- 
able. 

Between these longest and shortest routes are several, 
each of which is followed, almost all the year around, 
and continuously in the summertime, by the big and 
speeding touring cars or sport-car roadsters, the slower 
middle-class sedans or coupes, and the domestic "flivvers" 

[140] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

of Chicagoans on their way to the Lake for their first 
or their hundredth time. 

One of these routes, and the easiest at this date (1922), 
is found by going via Lincoln Park to Diversey Boulevard, 
Diversey Boulevard to Elston Avenue, Elston Avenue to 
Lawrence Avenue, Lawrence Avenue west to Milwaukee 
Avenue, on Milwaukee Avenue to the fork of the cement 
roads near Half Day, taking the right-hand concrete road 
through the western edge of Lake Forest to Libertyville, 
and thence west to Volo, to McHenry, Richmond, Genoa 
Junction, and Lake Geneva. This road on entering Wis- 
consin becomes State Highway No. 12, just north of Rich- 
mond. Its distance to Geneva is about 90 miles. It is 
especially popular with motorists from Fort Sheridan, High- 
land Park, and Evanston, as the most direct and con- 
venient for these North Shore suburbs. 

A route followed by many going to the opposite end 
of the Lake leads via Algonquin and Crystal Lake. Here 
one can go either to the right (east) to McHenry, Rich- 
mond, and thence as above; or to the left (west) to Wood- 
stock and Harvard, and from Harvard straight north 14 
miles to Walworth and east to Fontana, at the western 
end of the Lake. 

The cross-country motorist, from the northwest, from 
or through Minneapolis and St. Paul, to Lake Geneva, 
has a choice of several routes. One, well known and 
much traveled, keeps to the western side of the Missis- 
sippi, through Hastings, Red Wing, Wabasha, and Winona, 
in Minnesota, crossing into Wisconsin at La Crosse. 
From La Crosse the Wisconsin Highway No. 1 1 will take 
him at the end of 136 miles directly into Madison; and 

[141] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

from Madison, Highway lo will take him to Janes ville 
and No. 20 to Delavan, whence No. 50 leads to the town 
of Geneva, 74 miles east of Madison. 

Or, if he wishes to keep to Wisconsin roads, crossing 
into the state at Hudson, he should take Highway 45 to 
Ellsworth, 34 to Durand or on to Mondovi, No. 25 from 
Durand or No. 37 from Mondovi to Alma, No. 25 via 
Galesville, and thence No. 11 to La Crosse, Madison, 
Janesville, and so on, as before mentioned. 

Others, covering the concrete from Green Bay to 
Milwaukee and Chicago, go east across the state from 
Hudson by Highway No. 12 to Eau Claire, whence No. 16 
will take them straight through Chippewa Falls, Abbots- 
ford, Wausau, and Shawano into Green Bay. This great 
road across Wisconsin follows almost exactly the present 
line of demarcation between the agricultural southern por- 
tion of the state, and the northern, wooded district, origi- 
nally the great "white pine country," long since stripped 
by the lumberman, its present dense second growth 
being increasingly homesteaded and farmed. With its 
literal thousands of lakes of the Chippewa and Flambeau 
and Manitowish drainage areas, the "north country" is 
becoming increasingly a summertime playground, vaca- 
tion place, and muskellunge-fishing resort of national 
repute, while with each fall it is the goal beloved of the 
partridge and deer hunters. 

Nor are these middle western starting-points for Lake 
Geneva the only ones whence its visitors come. Every 
year sees cars from the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, from 
Florida and California, roll into Geneva or Williams Bay 
in increasing numbers. These motorists, however, will 

[142] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



have their own long-distance route books in hand, and 
need only to know that, from the eastern states, they must 
go first to Chicago and thence the few miles farther north. 
Those coming from the western states, if by the southern 
route, should make for St. Louis and there take the 
excellent concrete highways to Chicago; if by the more 
northerly Lincoln Highway, they need only to keep on 
to the metropolis of Illinois. If the weather has been good 
for some days, or if they are willing to take their chances 
on the dirt roads of the state up to the Wisconsin line, 
they may shorten the trip by turning northward at Dixon 
through Rockford and Beloit, or at Geneva (Illinois) 
through Elgin to Crystal Lake, and thence by either 
McHenry to the eastern, or Harvard to the western, ends 
of the "beauty spot of the Middle West." 

A bit of road that ought not to be missed by anyone 
motoring around Lake Geneva lies between the foot of 
the Lake and Williams Bay and is interesting both for its 
wooded surroundings and for its forming the readiest 
access to the private homes and grounds along the north 
shore. From its many smooth turns and dips and rises 
it is locally known as the "Snake Road." One motoring 
westward from Geneva should turn to the left at the first 
four-corners, just after passing the "rustic" gateway of 
the Borden estate. Keeping to the road thus reached, 
one passes in the rear, and past the barns, gardens, and 
handsome entrances of more than a dozen of the most 
widely known of the residences on the Lake. This road 
will also bring him back to the main highway between 
Geneva and the Bay. If driving from the direction of 
the Bay, at a Httle over 4 miles of travel he will come 

[143] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

to a four-corners, with a neat brick schoolhouse, known 
as the "woods school," on his right. Turning south (to 
the right) here, the second road to the left will put him 
on the "Snake Road," which, again, will lead him back 
to the main highway near the town of Geneva. 

This chapter being written for motorists about Lake 
Geneva, it may assuredly voice the plaint they repeatedly 
utter on making the acquaintance of certain of the roads 
of its neighborhood. When will local road committees 
and road contractors learn that road funds and road labor 
are both practically thrown away when they result only 
in dumping loads of loose gravel in piles in the middle of 
a highway, leaving it thus, undistributed, unrolled, 
uncared for, to "let the traffic wear it down" ? The result 
is of course worthless, the sole possible advantage being 
that a few possible mudholes are filled up or prevented 
from forming. The main roads around Lake Geneva con- 
stitute some of the most constantly used highways in 
Wisconsin, and ought to be the finest in the state. Being 
used for several months in the year largely by "for- 
eign" motorists, tourists, visitors, and summer residents 
from outside the state, if kept in good condition or finely 
paved they would attract wide attention and reflect great 
credit on the state and on those responsible for it. As it 
is until given other treatment than that which it has 
until now (1922) received, some are the most uncom- 
fortable and least creditable pieces of public highway in 
the Badger State. 



[144] 



CHAPTER IX 
WALWORTH COUNTY 

The greatest impetus to the early and rapid entrance 
and settlement of southern Wisconsin was due to the 
spread throughout the eastern states of reports accom- 
panying the attention attracted thither during the Black 
Hawk War of 1832, commenting on the almost untouched 
richness, fertility, natural advantages, and attractiveness 
of this part of the Middle West. 

It is told of Sullivan's expedition against the hostile 
Iroquois of New York State in 1779, that on the march 
of his volunteers, almost wholly frontiersmen and pioneer 
farmers, into the new and to them unvisited country 
covered by the campaign, these infantrymen might be 
seen to thrust their bayonets into the earth as they 
marched, examining the bits of dirt thus picked up to 
determine the quality, richness, and desirability of the 
soil as the possible location of future farms. The dis- 
coveries thus made were followed, immediately on the 
close of the campaign and its termination of dangers 
of further savage hostilities, by a notable wave of immi- 
gration into the districts explored, resulting in the rapid 
settlement of all the fertile lands marched over by the 
troops during the war. 

In much the same way were inspired the first large 
movements of settlers into the hitherto little-known 
"frontier" territory of southern Wisconsin. The troops 
which did the most persistent and aggressive work in 
following Black Hawk's thousand Sauk warriors in their 

[145I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

retreat up the Rock River Valley into southeastern 
Wisconsin, to Lake Koshkonong and westward to the 
Mississippi River, were General Atkinson's army of three 
hundred regulars under Colonel Zachary Taylor and 
thirty-two hundred volunteers from the newly opened lead 
mines along the Illinois line and the front line of farm 
settlements in Michigan. It is difficult for us of this later 
day of a largely stable population and settled state of 
civilization to realize how widespread was the spirit of 
eager pushing ever westward into the reported new, rich, 
and desirable lands and natural surroundings continually 
announced from the ever advancing western frontier. 
Everyone had the fever for westward investigation, 
settlement, and residence. The motive was begotten in 
almost equal parts of the spirit of adventure, of a desire 
for improved circumstances quickly to be won, and of 
eagerness for the rich gains and money profits to be made 
by trade and business in supplying the needs of new 
communities. The eastern farmer wearied of his stony 
hillside acres when he heard of the stoneless loam of western 
river valleys. The ambitious merchant dreamed of open- 
ing warehouses beside the piers of Detroit and Chicago, 
their cargoes from the East to be quickly turned into 
profits by sale to the new towns and developing settle- 
ments. Not least eager of all to push still farther were 
the residents on the frontier itself, in many of whom no 
impulse was as irresistible as the conviction that, desirable 
as might be their present location, there were still richer 
soil, more game, new water powers to be developed for 
the taking, new communities springing up in which ability 
might find opportunity for leadership and promotion — and 

[146] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

these always just ahead! Accordingly, for the seventeen 
years from the Black Hawk War to the discovery of gold 
in California, it was not the Far West but southern 
Wisconsin that was the eagerly sought El Dorado of 
American ambition. 

It may be commented that the contagion was not 
confined to this side of the Atlantic; nor, alas, was its 
promotion always honest. Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit 
contains a sad, bitter, and exaggerated, but by no means 
wholly unwarranted description of the crudities, dis- 
honesties, and disappointments suffered by many a 
hopeful and trusting but ignorant and inexperienced 
English immigrant, who hastened to America's newer 
settlements only to lose his little all in deluded invest- 
ments or to find himself, perhaps at the best, amid frontier 
circumstances and peoples so foreign to his way of life 
that he returned to England, if able to return at all, 
disgusted and embittered against America and all her 
ways. The early German and Swiss immigrants of the 
forties, less ambitious of rapid gains and more inured 
to hard work, found things more to their liking, and 
became elements that quickly took root in the new soil 
and developed into communities noted for their industry, 
thrift, and devotion to liberty, education, and religion. 

It soon became a middle western proverb that "the 
six northern counties of Illinois and the six southern 
counties of Wisconsin" were the "richest country in the 
Mississippi Valley." The writer, then a resident of one 
of the Illinois counties in question, remembers often 
hearing the saying quoted in his boyhood, and the verdict 
remains largely true today. 

[147] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

Walworth County, Wisconsin, lies in this favored 
district. Just east of the main line of march of the troops 
in the Black Hawk War, it was visited by their scouts 
and rangers, and after the suppression of the more 
restless Indian tribes the lands of its remaining groups of 
peaceful Pottawatomies were acquired by the govern- 
ment, and the splendid waters, woods, and fertile up- 
lands were eagerly sought by those who had heard of 
the richness, resources, and beauty of the whole area. 
These hastened to enter their claims, to erect their first 
log-cabin homes, to clear acres and break them with plow 
and ox team, or to grasp the great opportunity of the 
hour by erecting sawmills and gristmills wherever lake 
or river could be dammed. To such localities the new 
roads accordingly led, and near them gathered the new 
cabins, houses, farms, stores, schools, and churches, 
forming hamlets which presently grew into villages, 
towns, and cities. There is hardly a center in Walworth 
County today which had not an early water power and 
mill as its original attraction. 

The Territory of Wisconsin was created by act of 
Congress in 1836 out of what had been till then a part of 
the Territory of Michigan; and was fortunate enough to 
escape the awful names of "Michigania" and "Assen- 
sipia," suggested for portions of its area in Thomas 
Jefferson's plans of 1874 for the Northwest Territory! 
Becoming a state ten years later, its line of demarcation 
from Illinois was confirmed at 42^34'. This line lies 
3I miles south of the southernmost point of Lake Geneva. 
Walworth County was set apart in 1839, having been 
before that date included in Racine County. It was 

[148] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



named in honor of Chancellor Reuben H. Walworth of 
New York State, then a nationally known figure. The 
town of Elkhorn, located at the exact geographical center 
of the county, was selected as the county seat. The 
county forms an exact square, 24 miles on a side, con- 
taining 576 square miles. It is divided, checkerboard- 
fashion, into sixteen townships of 1,6 square miles each — 
each a square, 6 miles on a side — named as below: 



White- 
water 


La Grange 


Troy 


East 
Troy 


Richmond 


Sugar 
Creek 


Lafayette 


Spring 
Prairie 


Darien 


Delavan 


Geneva 


Lyons 


Sharon 


Walworth 


Linn 


Bloom- 
field 



The western end of Lake Geneva lies in Walworth 
Township, its larger portion in Linn, and its extreme 
northeastern bay in Geneva. 

The townships of Sharon and Walworth were, in the 
earliest days of the settlement of the Lake country, 
organized as one, under the name of "Fontana," as 
voted at a meeting of the settlers at the head of the 
Lake, September 25, 1839. The gathering was held 

[149] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

in a small log house near the Lake and consisted of the 
seven pioneer heads of the families in the neighborhood. 
The name was suggested by one Mathias More, and was 
unanimously adopted by the company under the impres- 
sion that it was a French name! In the legislature of 
1842, James A. Maxwell, the local representative, of his 
own accord effected the change to the name of Walworth. 
The original name continued in use for a year or more, 
being in the records of the first township meeting, in 1843. 
Happily, the old name has been retained as that of the 
settlement which has grown up on the site of the homes 
of those who first adopted it. 

Within the first half-dozen years of the separate 
existence of Walworth County, one corner of its soil 
became the scene of the rise of one of the most curious 
episodes — religious, political, or social, or, as in this case, 
all three combined — in the entire history of the United 
States. Now an almost completely forgotten incident of 
the long ago, having lasted for little over a dozen years 
in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was for a time 
none other than the only attempt ever made to establish 
a kingdom within the bounds of the Union. It is safe 
to say that few of the readers of this book, however well 
they may know the Lake Geneva country, have ever heard 
of the audacious and, for a time, largely successful enter- 
prise in question, despite the fact that in their grand- 
fathers' days it gained a wide notoriety and for a period 
numbered among its adherents, as so eminent an authority 
as Reuben G. Thwaites says, "several thousand" souls. 

The scheme was begotten in the brain of an ambitious 
young ex-schoolmaster, journalist, lawyer, office-holder, 

[150] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and temperance lecturer, from New York State, James 
Jesse Strang by name, who in 1843, at thirty years of 
age, came to the Httle village of Burlington and opened 
a law office. He presently married Mary Pierce, the 
daughter of a settler on a tract of land west of the ham- 
let. It was at the time of the Mormon activity at Nau- 
voo, Illinois, and itinerant Mormon preachers to the 
frontier settlements evidently suggested to the restless 
mind of the newcomer a possible channel for accom- 
plishing dreams of a rapid rise to prominence and power. 
Visiting Nauvoo, he made a favorable impression on the 
minds of the leaders of the sect, hastened through the 
preliminaries of conversion, baptism, and promotion, was 
empowered to "plant a stake of Zion" near his Wis- 
consin home, and within six months was aspiring to 
become a second Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. 

For his Wisconsin colony he selected the site of his 
wife's inherited property, a mile and a half west of 
Burlington, where the road to Spring Prairie — now State 
Highway 20 — crosses the White River. Here, in a 
lovely and fertile valley, in what is now Section 25, 
Spring Prairie Township, he established a town which he 
named Voree, and soon succeeded in gathering around 
him a colony of several hundred of the more credulous 
and easily led of the immigrants of the early forties. 
These colonists located on farms on both sides of the 
river, the majority of them within half a mile of where 
it was planned to raise an enormous "temple." This 
structure, reported as intended to cover not less than two 
acres of ground, was south of the present highway and 
west of the bridge over the White River. Here the 

[151] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

cornerstone was laid with imposing ceremonies, to which 
the colonists marched in procession, four abreast, their 
numbers forming a column half a mile long. During 
the active life of the colony at Voree, however, the building 
rose no higher than to a point where its thick basement 
walls were "up to a man's chin," as a contemporary- 
description puts it. 

The motorist who will stop his car, a few hundred 
yards west of the bridge, long enough to survey the 
splendid farms about the spot today, may note on the 
north side of the road one or two venerable stone houses 
of simple architecture. These have survived from the 
days when they stood among many that lined the highway 
and formed the once widely heralded "City of Voree," 
to quote the founder's words, "which is, being translated. 
Garden of Peace." The cemetery of the colony is still 
barely traceable, on the west side of the road from 
the bridge south to the Burlington-Lyons highway, on 
a knoll crossed by a fence near the barns of the Yanney 
farm. Here in a fence corner a few weed-grown depres- 
sions and crumbling fragments of headstones indicate 
the graves, in one of which eventually lay the founder of 
the settlement, after the curtain had fallen on his daring 
schemes, tragically brought to their close. 

On the death of Joseph and Hiram Smith at the hands 
of the mob at Carthage, Illinois, June 27, 1844, Strang 
hastened to Nauvoo and appeared before the remaining 
Mormon leaders with what purported to be a recent 
letter from the dead "prophet," prophesying his assassina- 
tion and appointing Strang his successor! This was too 
much for Brigham Young and his associates, who promptly 

[152] 









JAMES JESSE STRANG 
(From the only photograph known to be in existence. Reproduced from 
Henry E. Legler's Leading Events of Wisconsin History.) 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

denounced Strang as an impostor and a forger, and 
excommunicated him. Nothing daunted, he returned to 
Voree, began the mentioned huge central house of worship, 
and established a printing press, a weekly paper, the 
Voree Herald^ and a council of elders and priests. In 
September, 1845, Strang announced a revelation that 
there was an "ancient record" buried within the limits 
of the settlement, which he was to obtain and translate. 
He took several selected witnesses to the spot, on the 
low hillside south of the river, whence, from under an 
oak tree of considerable size, there were disinterred a 
number of copper plates whose mysterious hieroglyphic 
writings, when deciphered by Strang, went far in the 
minds of his followers to establish his claim to the right 
of succession of their martyred seer, whose original 
"golden plates" had laid the foundation for the whole 
subsequent structure of Mormonism. For his plates 
Strang claimed that their weird characters embodied 
laws originally and divinely given to Moses in addition 
to those contained in the Old Testament, and his transla- 
tion of their alleged contents formed the principal text 
of the "Book of the Law of the Lord," which he subse- 
quently gave out, and presently printed, for the govern- 
ment and discipline of the sect which he was rapidly 
forming. From the time of this announcement Strang 
was known to the "saints," of his own group at least, as 
the "Prophet James." 

The Mormon phrase, "planting a stake of Zion," was 
not a figure of speech only, as a symbolic "stake" was 
actually erected, being a great oaken post 8 feet high 
and 19 inches in diameter, set up in the center of the 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

highway where it crossed the county Hne. After the 
collapse of the colony it was removed by the authorities 
as an obstruction to traffic. The White River, the outlet 
of Lake Geneva, passing through the settlement, was the 
center of many of its principal activities. Here a dam 
for a water power was built, here converts were immersed, 
and the rising ground on the south bank formed an 
open-air auditorium for the services held on Saturdays, 
the "seventh-day" Sabbath of the faithful. There was 
no bridge across the river during the life of the colony, but 
a ferry was operated, with a charge of 25 cents for each 
passeng^er, the proceeds going to the treasury of the 
colony. The old stone house still standing on the north 
side of the road west of the river and nearest to it was 
the printing establishment whence the Voree Herald 
was issued and many other pamphlets were produced. 
(The name of the official paper was changed once or twice, 
as old specimens indicate.) On the removal of the 
colony this house was occupied by Strang's parents, 
who, though they joined his settlement here, never 
shared its faith. By 1847 ^^^ ^^^s than two thousand 
persons were residents of "Voree." 

Nevertheless, while the colony increased, a spirit of 
hostility to the spread of Mormonism grew among the fron- 
tier settlements. On the resultant migration of the Illinois 
Mormons to their eventual new home at Salt Lake City, 
Strang saw plainly that a new and more isolated location 
would be required for the development of his organization 
along his intended hnes and under his contemplated 
complete control over its members and their activities. 
From Voree he sent out missionaries — even to Europe! — 

[154] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

and among these recruiting agents some reported to him 
on the desirability of an almost unoccupied island in the 
northern end of Lake Michigan, known as Great Beaver 
Island. With others of his "apostles" he visited the 
island in May, 1847, and in 1849 he effected the removal 
of the great majority of his colonists by vessels from 
Racine to this and its neighboring islands. Here they 
were to support themselves chiefly by the fishing industry. 
The main settlement, on Great Beaver Island, was named 
in his honor, "St. James." Here again he built houses, 
roads, a school, fishing schooners, a printing-office which 
issued innumerable pamphlets and an ambitious news- 
paper, the Daily Northern Islander, Here again was begun 
another vast temple, the log walls of which had risen some 
8 feet in height by the time that the last disaster overtook 
him and hio schemes for power. 

On July 8, 1850, in accordance with a new "rev- 
elation" found in the "Book of the Law of the Lord," 
Strang had himself formally crowned as king. An 
elaborate coronation procession and ceremonial was ar- 
ranged by an ex-actor among his followers, with a 
scarlet coronation robe and a crown consisting of a plain 
circlet with frontal stars. Thereafter widely known as 
"King Strang," he yet, probably very wisely, allowed 
himself to be mentioned in his own press only as "Mr. 
Strang." The annual recurrence of the date, however, 
was ordered to be observed as "King's Day," and during 
the remaining six years that the colony lasted was observed 
with ceremonials, burnt offerings, obeisances to the king, 
and feasting and dancing. The reality of his claims to 
royalty, in his own mind and doubtless much more in 

[1551 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

the simple minds of his followers, may be known from 
the fact that the "Book of the Law of the Lord" bore on 
its title-page the authorization: "Printed by command 
of the King, at the Royal Press, St. James," and the 
letters "A.R.L," abbreviating, royal fashion, the Latin 
words meaning "First Year of the King." 

A bitter hatred of this rival and royal settlement soon 
developed among the other fishing villages of the northern 
shores of Lake Michigan, the feud attaining proportions 
that attracted the attention of newspapers of the eastern 
states and led Strang to arm his fishing schooners with 
cannon secured from Chicago. A federal investigation, 
instigated by President Millard Fillmore himself, having 
come to naught owing to Strang's influence with the 
Michigan courts and his plea of protection under American 
guaranties of religious liberty, he ventured on extensions 
of his absolutism and a more despotic rule. Strict tithes 
were exacted of all the colonists and sumptuary laws 
forbade the use of certain foods and liquors and tobacco. 

Strangely enough, however, and with a curious 
parallelism to Mr. Kipling's story of "The Man Who 
Would Be King," Strang's fatal step took the form of 
interference with the affairs of the women of his "king- 
dom." For these he first proclaimed a law that one and 
all must wear their hair tightly drawn back and fastened 
in a knot at the back of the head and must adopt a garb 
consisting of a most unattractive blouselike upper gar- 
ment with calico pantalettes or bloomers reaching to 
the ankles. He then discovered that the "Book of the 
Law of the Lord" sanctioned polygamy, and took five 
wives himself, his first wife having remained behind 

[156] 



THE 



Bool^ of tliB Law of tJB LoPd; 



CONSISTING OF 



An Inspired Translalion of Some of the Most 
Important Parts of the Law given to Moses, 
and a very few Additional Command- 
ments, with Brief Notes and References . 



PRINTKU BY COMMAND OF THE KING. 

AT THK ROYAL PRESS, ST. JAMES, 
A. K. I. 



FLYLEAF OF THE "BOOK OF THE LAW OF THE LORD," AS PRINTED 
AT JAMES J. STRANG'S GREAT BEAVER ISLAND COLONY 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

at Voree. The curious reader who may wish either 
verification or further elucidation along this line may 
find it in the mentioned laws in chapter xliv. 

Resentment of procedures such as these was not long 
in arising, abetted by the rival fisher settlements, and on 
June i6, 1856, Strang was assassinated, being shot by 
two rebellious subjects, the bullets from whose horse- 
pistol and revolver took effect in his head and back. The 
deed was done in the daytime and the men were well 
known, their names being immediately published in the 
local papers, one of them being a man who had been 
publicly whipped by Strang's orders for upholding his 
wife's refusal to wear the royally decreed bloomers! The 
murderers escaped on a steamer to Mackinac and were 
never brought to trial. 

Surviving his wounds several days, Strang issued his 
final orders for the future government of his "kingdom" 
and asked to be taken back to Voree. This was effected 
by a few devoted followers, and here his last hours were 
nursed by his first wife. The house into which he was 
borne on arrival at Voree is the mentioned old stone house 
north of the road and near the river, though before the 
end he was removed to another which has disappeared. 
He died on July 9 and was buried, as mentioned, in 
the nearby cemetery. Upon his death his disillusioned 
followers gradually wandered away from both colonies. 
The Beaver Island town was abandoned and was burned 
by its rivals, the foundations of the first temple at Voree 
were torn up, the very name of the place disappeared 
from the maps of Wisconsin, and the entire strange — 
indeed, the all-but-incredible — incident of a dozen years' 

[157] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

duration swiftly passed into the limbo of the many- 
curious but brief vagaries of human ambition and human 
delusion. 

In later years, on the sale for farm purposes of a portion 
of the old Mormon cemetery, including that containing 
the grave of Strang, a surviving daughter returned and 
effected the removal of his remains to the Protestant 
cemetery of the adjoining town of Burlington, where 
their resting-place, though unmarked, is well known to at 
least a few today. 

As lately as October, 1922, there still resided, in a little 
house embowered among the trees beside the main road 
that runs through the lovely valley of old Voree, a former 
follower and devotee of Strang, whose loyalty to his 
leader in the events of the long ago survived the passage 
of the years. It seems quite certain that this venerable 
man, Mr. Wingfield Watson by name, was the last sur- 
vivor of Strang's officers, he having been an "elder" in 
the island colony. Born in 1828, he went from his 
Michigan home to join the "saints," becoming the 
official "scribe" or recorder. At the hour of Strang's 
assassination he was working on the rising log walls 
of the "temple," and heard the fatal shots from the 
murderers' weapons. On the dissolution of the colony, 
after several sojourns, he came back to the site of Voree, 
where he resided for many years, a tireless student of 
the Book of Mormon and of the Book of the Law, and 
having among his humble possessions many interesting 
and valuable souvenirs, original newspapers, and the like, 
relating to an episode that has all but passed out of the 
knowledge of the rest of the world. To his documents, 

[158] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

his remarkable recollections, and his courtesy toward all 
who were interested in that past of which he was a part, 
the writer is indebted for many of the facts of the strange 
story. 

Another small Mormon group remains in Walworth 
County, though belonging to that split or branch of the 
original Mormons known as the "Reorganized Church of 
Latter Day Saints" which was formed by Joseph Smith, 
Jr., in i860. Of considerable numbers throughout the 
country, they have no connection with the Salt Lake 
branch and sect. This group was formed in Delavan 
and Geneva townships in 1886, and a year later built a 
church near Delap's Corners, on the Williams Bay- 
Elkhorn Road, a mile and a half north of the Bay. There 
are about sixty nominal members of this organization. 
Their simple, little old white frame building bears upon its 
front only the mystic letters, "L.D.S.," a designation 
which leads many a passing motorist to wonder, "What 
kind of a church can that be .''" — a question which, so 
far as the knowledge of most of them goes, remains 
forever unanswered. 

One of the most interesting facts about the county, 
and one that has probably been more influential than 
any other in giving it its three-quarters of a century of 
unbroken prosperity and thrift, is that from the first its 
population has been more largely of Anglo-Saxon descent 
and of American lineage than has been the case with many 
other districts in the state. As Reuben G. Thwaites, 
Wisconsin's foremost historian, says of the whole southern 
portion of the state: "It is a significant fact that the 
conspicuous force in the formative period of statehood 

[159] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

was that inherited from New England and New York." 
This was especially true of Walworth County. The 
majority of its first settlers came from New England, 
New York, and Pennsylvania, and these and their descend- 
ants, at election time and in town meeting and on village 
boards, adopted policies, and nominated and elected men, 
of American principles of property rights, conservative 
taxation, sound financial transactions, religious liberty, 
universal and progressive education, and the recognition 
and promotion of industry and thrift. As a result of 
the influence of such ideas, there is perhaps as large a 
proportion of Anglo-Saxon names among the owners of 
farms and industries throughout the county as may be 
found in any county in the state; a vastly larger propor- 
tion than is the case with many other counties, some of 
which were settled by whole immigrant colonies of Swiss, 
Germans, Poles, or Bohemians, migrating en bloc from 
their native towns to Wisconsin and establishing as 
nearly as possible complete duplicates of their European 
communities. There are not less than a score of such 
national groups throughout the state, the principal ones 
being the Swiss town of New Glarus, the German com- 
munistic settlement of St. Nanzianz in Manitowoc County, 
the Icelanders of Washington Island in Green Bay, the 
Cornishmen of the lead-mine district, and the Norwegians 
of Koshkonong, the wealthiest Norwegian community in 
America. All these were planted in the years when, as 
has been mentioned, Wisconsin was the Land of Promise 
for the ambitious of both sides of the Atlantic. By the 
time of the arrival of these, however, the advantages of 
Walworth County had been largely pre-empted by a 

[i6o] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

population of American birth. Next in number came 
the Germans, and in recent years a large number of farmers 
of Scandinavian origin have bought farms or entered 
business activities in several towns, reaping the rewards 
of their characteristic patience, industry, thrift, and 
clannishness for the mutual benefit of all concerned. 
The present general psychology of the rural districts has 
been described as being of the "Chautauqua Circle 
class," and the designation is not inapt, with its convey- 
ance of the idea of a middle-class conservatism coupled 
with a marked interest in good speaking, preaching, 
music, humor, and the neighborliness of such gatherings. 
The spirit, the dramatis personae, not less than the very 
dialect of Zona Gale's Friendship Village, can be found in 
many a Walworth County village today. 

The influences that have gone farthest to unify the 
population of the county along financial, educational, 
religious, and social lines have been the subject of one of 
the most remarkable and valuable studies ever conducted 
of so large a geographico-social unit. Some years ago 
a studious resident of Wisconsin was perusing a copy of 
the English scientific periodical and review. Nature, 
when he came upon a mention of an unusual work among 
American publications of the day. It has not been the 
fashion for English critics to praise contemporaneous 
American documents highly, and the laudatory comments 
on the treatise in question surprised the reader. The 
pamphlet reviewed was described as an elaborate analy- 
sis of the various social interests of an entire county 
in one of the states, and the practical relationships of y 

the rural population to the typical activities of the small 

[i6i] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

towns of its 500 square miles. Existing influences, 
mercantile, banking, educational, and religious, were 
indicated by charts based on an actual house-to-house or 
farm-to-farm survey of the entire county. The value of 
these influences and their adequacy or inadequacy to 
meet the needs of the population were estimated, and the 
needed and possible improvements in the advantages 
and facilities enjoyed by the rural population and its 
children and youth were pointed out. The English 
editor's comments on the work as a study of a community 
and a foundation for the betterment of its material, 
intellectual, and spiritual conditions, deeply impressed 
the Wisconsin reader. As he read he said to himself, 
**If I knew where in the entire United States there was a 
county which had been made the subject of so valuable, 
modern, and progressive a study as this, where existing 
facts and influences are so well known and the lines of 
progress so accurately pointed out, I should feel like 
deliberately going there to live!" Hastening through 
the review to find out in what state the county thus 
studied lay, he was amazed to discover that it was none 
other than Walworth County, Wisconsin, within whose 
bounds he himself lived, and had for a score of years! 

The work reviewed in the English magazine was a 
pamphlet published by the University of Wisconsin as its 
Research Bulletin No. 34, entitled. The Social Anatomy of 
a Rural Community ^ by Mr. C. J. Galpin, then a member of 
the university's staff, but since then called, largel]/ as a 
result of this notable piece of work, to "go up higher" 
and to serve the United States government and the 
entire nation along similar lines. Its thoroughness may 

[162] 



THE BOOK OF L A K E GENEVA 

be inferred from the fact that it contains— for it is still 
in print and may be obtained from the university — a map 
of the county on which is indicated every single home in 
the county, and a series of charts showing where the 
residents of these homes do their trading or banking, 
what local newspaper they take, where they market their 
dairy products, what churches they go to, what high 
schools their children attend, and the extent to which the 
offered public-library privileges of the towns of the county 
are used by the rural population. Coupled with a second 
related social study by the same author, entitled. The 
Country Church an Economic and Social Force, and 
similarly published by the state university, these offer 
to interested individuals and interests one of the most 
remarkable and valuable studies yet produced by modern 
sociological science. It is along lines like these that 
future years will see the scientifically determined prog- 
ress, material and spiritual, of rural America planned 
and carried out. Thus the very hills, valleys, and lake 
shores originally eagerly appropriated by the forefathers 
because of their offer of material reward shall yield to 
posterity a larger prosperity, intelligence, beauty, and 
spirituality than was ever dreamed by the pioneers whose 
courage and toil blazed the way to their Promised Land. 
Among the fifty churches of the county, two of those 
located in its rural centers deserve special recognition for 
the breadth of their spirit and their ministration to their 
respective districts. These are the community church of 
the village of Honey Creek, in Spring Prairie Township, 
and the Methodist church of La Grange, at almost the 
exact center of the township of that name. Wholly 

[163] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

undenominational in spirit, these churches have discovered 
that the Christian reHgion is rightly concerned for the 
highest possible development, attainment, and happiness 
of men, women, and children, here as well as hereafter. 
Accordingly, charities, men's "brotherhoods," women's 
societies, high schools, lecture courses, agricultural im- 
provements, social gatherings, and recreations have all 
been objects of the practical work of both. Happy they 
who live in a community which has discovered that such 
tasks flow directly from the words of the Master! Surely, 
this is to help that his Kingdom shall come and his will 
"be done on earth as it is in Heaven." 

The total resident population of Walworth County 
was, in 1920, 29,327 persons. Of these the more localized 
settlements contained respectively the indicated numbers: 

Whitewater 3>2i5 Walworth 757 

Delavan 3>oi6 Genoa Junction 656 

Lake Geneva 2,632 Darien 600 

Elkhorn i>99i Williams Bay 436 

Sharon 908 Lyons 400 

East Troy 773 Honey Creek 200 

These constitute the twelve principal trading zones 
for the population of the county. Among them are, 
naturally, the sources of the seven newspapers published 
in and supported by the county, the twelve banking 
centers, the nine high-school locations, and the four 
public libraries (Whitewater, Lake Geneva, Delavan, and 
Elkhorn); the latter, interestingly enough, are estimated 
to be patronized by not less than 31 per cent of all the 
farm homes within reach. They also form the twelve 
centers where the farming population worships which 

[164] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

prefers to "go to town to church" rather than to attend 
the rural churches. 

The county has more milk condenseries, nine in 
number, than any other county in the entire United 
States. With thirteen milk-shipping points and three 
creameries, there is marketed an annual dairy output 
of between $3,500,000 and $4,000,000 in value, the 
leading product of the county. The county ranks 
as the third in the state, next to Waukesha and Jeffer- 
son counties, in the average annual milk yield of each 
milch cow, with its figures of not less than 5,605 pounds 
of milk per cow per year. Its 2,779 farms, assessed 
in 1920 at a value of $51,695,371, contain 59,000 dairy 
cattle and 33,854 hogs. Of the cattle, 85 per cent are 
Holsteins. Of the sires of these, 71 per cent are pure- 
bred bulls. As elsewhere throughout the distinctly 
dairying areas of the country, the present tendency 
of the milk industry is to the establishment of con- 
denseries nearer the immediate source of supply, bringing 
these "milk factories," as they are often called, out 
of the larger cities to the towns and villages. Here 
the received milk is fully treated and bottled before 
shipment to metropolitan centers, instead of on arrival 
there in bulk. The number of whole carloads of bottled 
milk sent from these centers into Chicago alone, every 
day of the year, would greatly surprise anyone not fa- 
mihar with the size and constant growth of the milk 
industry in the Middle West today. 

Of the farms of Walworth County, more than two- 
thirds are owned by the families who live on them, less 
than one-third being operated by tenant farmers. 

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THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

A feature of the farms of the county that invariably 
impresses itself on even the fastest-traveling motorist 
over its roadways is the remarkable number of the lofty 
cylindrical silo structures that catch the eye on any 
glance over the landscapes. These are so numerous 
and so noticeable — and incidentally their annual contents 
are so valuable — as to entitle them to a mention by 
themselves as a notable feature of modern agricultural 
methods and equipment. Of varying construction — cast 
concrete, lustrous brown vitrified brick, occasional re- 
maining older wooden constructions, and often hand- 
some brick erections with ornamental designs about their 
tops — their appearance in the landscape has been com- 
pared by travelers to that of the strange and puzzling 
ancient "round towers" of Ireland. It is safe to say, 
however, that the value of their contents would consider- 
ably astonish any member of the farming population of 
the Emerald Isle. It has been estimated that the ensilage 
annually gathered into these modern farm food-storage 
devices, in the state of Wisconsin alone, represents a 
value of over ^57,000,000, an amount equal to the com- 
bined capital of more than one hundred average country 
banks of the state. There are today more than thirty- 
five hundred such silos in Walworth County alone, and 
their number is materially increased every year. 

While on the subject of this brief sketch of the vocation, 
character, and spirit of the population of the county, it 
must not be forgotten that in the hour of their country's 
greatest need there went forth from the homes of farm and 
village not less than fourteen hundred of its sons, to take 
part in the world-war for the rights and liberties of man- 

[166] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

kind. Despite the repeated asseverations of a certain 
scion of Wisconsin, that "it was not our war" and that 
"we never ought to have gone into it," these went not 
against their will! Instead, they crowded the recruiting 
offices to enlist, in such numbers that on the occasion of 
the first draft there were required from Walworth County- 
less than twenty men; the rest of her entire quota of 
contribution to the country's forces having been filled by 
these volunteers of the flower of her youth! Their 
achievements are part of the history of the immortal 
Thirty-second Division, the awe of Europe in the hour 
of battle, to remain for all time the proudest boast of 
their posterity! 

The oldest single institution of the community life 
of the entire county is the "Annual Exhibition of the 
Walworth County Agricultural Society," commonly called 
the County Fair. There are county fairs galore in the 
United States, but few indeed that can boast an unbroken 
history of over seventy years. In Walworth County the 
annual fair, hke many other valuable features in its rural 
life, was due to the fact that its early population came 
largely from those sections of New England, New York, 
and Pennsylvania, in which the yearly county display 
was an established feature. The first "exhibition" was 
in October of 1850, at East Troy. Even at that early 
date there was shown imported breeding stock in the form 
of French and German goats and Durham bulls. One 
exhibitor displayed not less than twenty-five varieties 
of apples, and a woman contributor had a remarkable 
display of homemade gloves of her own manufacture. 
In 1 85 1 the "fair" was held at Elkhorn, on the ground 

[167] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

now covered by the block southwest of the city park. 
In 1852 it was held at Delavan, but the next year returned 
to Elkhorn, where it has been held ever since. In 1855 
the Agricultural Society purchased 6 acres of ground, 
included in the present "fair grounds," to be the site of 
the annual exhibition. This property has been increased 
to 54 acres, with all necessary buildings, stables, grand- 
stands, racetrack, and the like. From total receipts 
in 1850 reported as I45, its prosperity has increased 
to the figure of the more than $30,000 annually received 
today. Some of the finest live stock in the United 
States is always to be seen at its exhibitions — imported 
Flemish mares and stallions; Hereford, Guernsey, 
Holstein, and Swiss Brown cattle, Poland China hogs; 
and the famous, fashionable, and high-priced Toggen- 
burg goats. Here too is always to be heard at its best 
the local pride of Elkhorn, its famous brass band, 
descended in unbroken line from the original organi- 
zation formed in the tiny village of more than eighty 
years ago. Its outdoor concerts in the town square 
on summer evenings have won wide fame. Audiences 
of five thousand persons on occasion represent a sixth 
of the county population, while automobile parties 
often come from 30 to 40 miles distant. One of the 
great moving-picture companies, which endeavors to 
photograph the most representative features of modern 
American life and to furnish these among their "news 
films," has "filmed" the crowds on these occasions 
and sent the pictures far and wide as a remarkable 
instance of the united social interest of a rural com- 
munity. 

[168] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Lastly, a story, and a true one, of a glimpse of the 
spirit that makes the name of Walworth County significant 
wherever it is known. 

A certain farmer and his wife, both of foreign birth, 
had been by their industry and thrift well rewarded 
during the long years of their hard-working residence in 
the country of their adoption. Their broad acres were 
richly green each spring and more richly golden with each 
harvest time. Their herd of black and white Holsteins 
increased yearly. Their very plow horses were fat 
and sturdy. Their accounts at the village bank and 
milk condensery were as enviable as their credit at the 
"general store." Their neat brown house stood amid 
the towering lindens and catalpas on its green lawn, 
close beside a great white barn and a great red one and 
the implement shed and the garage for the Ford and the 
long poultry-house and the big pigsty. Scarcely the 
fastest car spun along the hard-graveled highway but its 
occupants could be seen to sweep with approving, if swift, 
glances the whole obviously prosperous and well-kept 
farmstead. 

But there were drawbacks to it all. They had no 
children, and therefore the less ties to the spot. They 
were no longer young, and it was undeniably hard and 
ceaseless work to keep the house immaculate and the 
farm going. It was often bitterly cold in winter and as 
often distressingly hot in midsummer. Why should they 
not escape it all — quit — sell out — ^and go to, well, say 
California.? Out there, they heard, it was always mild; 
no one had to shovel either snow or coal; and what they 
had in the bank, with what they ought to be able to sell 

[169] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

"the old place" for, would keep them in modest ease and 
comfort for the rest of their days. 

One day a big car stopped before the farm. Its 
occupant, a prosperous-looking man, scanned the place 
for a moment before he got out and walked to the front 
door. In businesslike fashion he came out with his 
errand without delay. "I like the looks of this place," 
he said. "I've often seen it, driving by, and if you'd 
like to talk about selling, I'd like to talk about buying it — 
right now. You would? Well, that's good. Would 
you consider anything like twenty-five thousand for it, as 
it stands } You would! That's better yet. Can't you 
meet me at Lawyer Hawkins' office in Delavan tomorrow 
afternoon, with your abstract, and start him making out 
the papers right away? You can? Well, that about 
settles it, I guess. See you tomorrow afternoon. So 
long!" and the big car rolled away from the front driveway, 
where it would so soon drive in to stay. 

They looked at one another. They could hardly 
believe what had happened, it had transpired so quickly. 
Of a sentimental but reticent race, they had not much 
to say, but each knew what the other was thinking. 
It had come! California was theirs! No more long and 
toiling days for people of their age. No more exposure 
to sun and rain and heat and cold. No more daily 
waiting on horses and cows and pigs and chickens, and 
calling that "making a living." Twenty-five thousand, 
with what they had, would more than take care of them — 
out in California's warmth and brightness and its big cities 
and beside its mountains and the sparkling sea! They 
could "take it easy," now. Their dream had come true! 

[170] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

In Lawyer Hawkins' office, the next day, their 
purchaser-benefactor was as prompt, brief, and business- 
like as before. He took the abstract of title and passed 
it to the man of law. "He'll get busy on it now," he 
said to the farmer and his wife. "Let's see, this is 
Friday. Suppose you come in on Monday afternoon; 
the papers'll be ready to sign then. But I want to bind 
this, and you'd probably like to see some money. So 
here's my suggestion. We'll each make out a check for 
three thousand, to bind this bargain, and we'll each give 
our check to Hawkins, and on Monday, when we sign, 
you will get your check back again, and mine, and twenty- 
two thousand more. It's just a deposit, you see, to keep 
either of us from backing out of the deal. Is that O.K. 
with you ? Here's my check now." 

The farmer ruminated over the proposition for a few 
moments, but could see nothing wrong with it. Hawkins 
told him it was all right, and he had known Hawkins for 
forty years, so presently he produced a checkbook and 
made out and handed over his check for $3,000. 

On the way home they stopped the Ford at the rail- 
road station and the farmer went in and with some 
embarassment but even more suppressed eagerness asked 
the agent for "a time-table to Californy." He received 
a couple of folders whose mere blue and green pictures 
of Long Beach and Mount Lowe were fascinating — how 
much more to people who could actually "go there 
'most any day we get ready, now" ? 

At the farm driveway they looked with new eyes at 
the "old place" which they were so soon to leave. How 
queer it would seem to think of not coming back to it 

[171] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

any more ? Never again to glance it all over critically 
and see "what was needed" to be done. Never again 
to see the sun on the barnyard at dawn, or setting in 
scarlet and gold across the highway and the fields and 
disappearing behind Lake Delavan's distant trees. She 
only murmured, "It'll seem queer," but he understood. 
"Yep," he said, "but I reckon things'll look nice in 
Californy, too." 

At the kitchen breakfast table the next morning they 
each avoided meeting the other's eyes, and both knew it. 
At last the farmer hesitated: "Don't look to me like ye'd 
slept much last night ?" — interrogation in his tone. ''Me — 
I cried all night," she answered. He lit his pipe gloomily. 
"Sunset looked good last night when we come in," he 
went on. " I seen a lot of 'em, lookin ' that way, evenin's, 
we've been livin' here; an' I got to wonderin' what I'd 
do without 'em to look at an' see what the next day's 
goin' to be. An' last night I got to thinkin' about the 
horses an' cows an' pigs an' all, an' wonderin' who'd 
look after 'em like I've done — ^or if that feller'd just sell 
'em all off to folks livin' 'round here. They's some 
ain't fur away I'd hate to have handlin' stock I've treated 
like they'd ought to be treated." He headed for the barn 
without more words. 

With Sunday's partial respite from farm work they 
sat out under the trees for a few moments and talked 
it over, after the fashion of their kind. "Out in Californy 
we might maybe wish we hadn't done it," the wife said. 
Presently she added, "An' if either of us was to die — 
an' — an' we ain't goin' to live forever, at our age — why 
what in the world 'd the other do then?'' with a final 

[172] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

desperate vehemence as the horror and loneliness of 
the imagined situation dawned vividly upon her for the 
first time. 

The farmer said nothing for a long time, but when he 
spoke it was obviously continuing his thought aloud. 
"Three thousan' 's three thousan','' he said. "But 
we've made it afore, an' we can make it again, give 
us a few years more. An ' if we let it go — why, we ain't 
lost the place, anyhow. An' if we ain't any children 
to keep it, why, there's my brother Ole's boys, to leave 
it to, when we get through. They've got farmin' sense 
an* they'd keep it like we've done. They soldiered 
too — didn't wait to be drafted, but just up an' went — 
remember how proud we was of 'em then? Somethin's 
due 'em from us old folks for that, too, I been thinkin'. 
Guess I forgot about 'em when I got to thinkin' how good 
Californy might feel." 

After a long silence it finally came out — the great 
question. "It's yours's much 's it's mine. You willin' 
we sh'd tell that man he c'n keep the money — and we 
keep the place ?" 

With a great sob she cried out, "O yes, yes^ and her 
hands went up to her face as she said it. 

At the appointed hour of Monday afternoon they 
stood in the door of the office in Delavan. "Come in — 
it's all ready," greeted the lawyer and his client together, 
pointing to papers spread out upon the table. The 
farmer stepped to the table and saw his abstract and 
picked it up. Putting it in a pocket he said, "We jus' 
come to say that we've thought it over an' we reckon we 
won't trade. Yes, I know about that check o' mine. 

[173] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

You keep it, jus' 's we agreed. It's all right with me — it's 
worth it!" And he was gone. 

The Ford lost no time in reaching the farm driveway 
once more. As it stopped its occupants looked, with new 
eyes again, at fields and barns and the big silo and the 
black and white Holsteins; though perhaps she looked 
chiefly and fixedly at the little brown house among the 
lindens and catalpas. He turned to look at the sun as 
it sank in scarlet and gold across the highway and the 
fields and the trees beyond Delavan Lake. "It's worth 
it," he said. 



[174] 



CHAPTER X 
INSTITUTIONS AND HOMES ON LAKE GENEVA 

Loria, the great Italian economist, has a sentence in 
his noted work, Analisi della Proprieta Capitalistay which 
reveals that he, like another De Tocqueville or Bryce, 
has seen deeply enough into American history to note the 
significance of the unique rapidity of the progress of 
civilization in the United States. "America," he says, 
"has the key to the historical enigma which Europe has 
sought for centuries in vain, and the land which has no 
history reveals luminously the course of universal history." 

Upon this statement our own Professor Frederick 
Jackson Turner, of Harvard, formerly of the University 
of Wisconsin, in his fascinating book, The Frontier in 
American History^ makes a comment which is not less 
striking than its text. Quoting the sentence, he says: 

There is much truth in this. The United States Hes like a huge 
page in the history of society. Line by line, as we read this page 
from West to East we find the record of social evolution. It begins 
with the Indian and the hunter; it goes on to tell of the disintegration 
of savagery by the entrance of the trader, the pathfinder of civiliza- 
tion; we read the annals of the pastoral stage in ranch-life; the exploita- 
tion of the soil by the raising of unrotated crops of corn and wheat in 
sparsely settled farming communities; the intensive culture of the 
denser farm settlement; and finally the manufacturing organization 
with city and factory system. This page is familiar to the student of 
census statistics, but how little of it has been used by our historians. 
Particularly in eastern states this page is a palimpsest. What is 
now a manufacturing state was in an earlier decade an area of intensive 
farming. Earlier yet it had been a wheat area, and still earlier the 
"range" had attracted the cattle-herder. Thus Wisconsin, now 

[175] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

developing manufacture, is a state with varied agricultural interests. 
But earlier it was given over to almost exclusive grain-raising, like 
North Dakota at the present time. 

Some reader may like to know the meaning of the word 
"palimpsest" used by Professor Turner in his description 
of the successive scenes of civilization's progress of which 
the United States has been the stage. In early litera- 
ture, long before the invention of printing, when writing 
materials were none too abundant, the scribe who found 
himself without a fresh sheet of parchment or papyrus 
for letter or other document would frequently avail 
himself of a page on which something else had been 
written, and would write his composition directly over 
the previous writing. Such a page is called in scientific 
phraseology a "palimpsest," signifying two or more 
records written on the same surface. The comparison is 
particularly apt as Professor Turner uses it, to illustrate 
the successive stages of progress in civilization which have 
taken place in wonderfully rapid succession in many parts 
of America, compared with the far more gradual advance- 
ment from one such stage to the next on the older and 
slower areas of the other continents. As in a true literary 
"palimpsest," or twice- written page, the later records have 
not quite obliterated the earlier, and traces of the former 
are discernible side by side with the latter. The spinning 
wheel of a century ago and the modern sewing machine 
may be found in the same Tennessee mountain cabin. 
The motorist touring southern highways may still note 
the ox team at the plow, and perhaps a tractor at work 
in the next field. In remote Rocky Mountain creeks 
an occasional aged prospector still "pans" for gold- 

[176] 



A\ 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

dust as they did in '49, but now perhaps within sound 
of the pounding stamps of some famous mining plant 
equipped with the latest modern machinery driven by 
electricity generated by a turbine at some waterfall miles 
away. In Walworth County, while writing these pages, 
the writer saw a Scandinavian farmer mowing by hand 
with a straight-handled scythe with right-angled blade, 
such as the first Norwegian colonists brought with them 
to the same territory in the early fifties. The student 
of European history must peruse the records of centuries 
to discern the successive stages of social evolution through 
which mankind has slowly arrived at present conditions 
and equipment. In America the past was but of yester- 
day. Its conditions may be learned from the reminiscences 
of men and women still living. One may talk with men 
who walked across the continent beside the ox teams and 
the prairie schooner, and who in their old age revisit the 
scenes of their youth, making the return trip by rail in 
as many days as they spent months on the original 
journey. 

Owing to the comparatively late discovery of Lake 
Geneva by the white man, these traces of early conditions 
amid the accomplishments of a later civilization, the 
things which give the study of American history its 
peculiar fascination, are especially in evidence to the 
student of its neighborhood. The surveyor who in 1835 
was probably the first white man to view the Lake from 
its eastern end lived to see, less than six decades later, its 
shores and waters the favorite summer resort of tens of 
thousands of visitors, and a flourishing and modern little 
city built along the very gravel beach which his was the 

[177] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

first white foot to tread. Payne, the hardy old frontiers- 
man who in 1836 spent two days in walking entirely 
around Geneva and Como, and found the surrounding 
country a primeval wilderness tenanted only by savages, 
saw before his death, thirty-five years later, the forests 
cleared, their areas converted into farms, the magically 
spreading system of American railways reaching the lake 
shore, steamboats plying the waters, and the beginning 
of the transformation of the unbroken forest into those 
palatial estates which have made Geneva famous as the 
middle western rival of Lake Champlain, Lake Placid, 
or Newport itself. Such rapidity of development of an 
uninhabited wilderness into an area of intensive modern 
agriculture, of a network of railways, of modern towns 
with every adjunct of civilization, and finally into a spot 
famous for its beauty and sought by thousands annually 
for residence or recreation, within the span of only about 
fifty years of human activity — all this could have hap- 
pened, and has happened, nowhere else on the surface of 
the globe. This it is that gives the swiftly moving panorama 
of American history its irresistible appeal. Alike beside the 
Thames, the Seine, the Rhine, the story of social progress 
from the cave dwelling to the chateau, from the savage to 
the savant, from the tribe to the empire, has occupied twenty 
centuries. But along the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Great 
Lakes, or even on the green hills and sparkling beaches 
of Lake Geneva, a similar record has required but from a 
tenth to a twentieth of that time for the narrative of a 
higher rise to a greater freedom. 

Less than 1 miles outside the eastern edge of Walworth 
County, in the town of Burlington, there stands one of 

[178] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

the beautiful residence estates of southeastern Wisconsin. 
Covering an entire city block, the grounds full of every 
variety of tree, shrub, and flower that will grow in its 
latitude, it testifies to the industry, thrift, and culture of 
the descendants of a German immigrant who in the forties 
began a business which is still carried on in the original 
quaint old brick building where it started. Amid the 
drives and pleasure grounds about the mansion, at one 
end of a superb vista of lofty pines, there stands one of 
the oldest remaining log cabins in the state. Its every 
timber square-hewn by the adze of some hardy frontiers- 
man, from the massive iron lock on its door, the first such 
lock made in the county, to the "pot hooks" still hang- 
ing in its fireplace and the many pairs of ancient deer's 
antlers still on its walls, it stands as it stood when its 
pioneer builder looked from its door upon the surrounding 
forest broken only by his rude clearing. The combina- 
tion and the contrast summarize the story of American 
progress, alike from the tallow dip to the electric light, 
from the ox team to the automobile, from poverty to 
prosperity, from the "little red schoolhouse" to the mod- 
ern university. Well may the world deem the country 
with such a history the Promised Land, and well might its 
citizens take as their national motto the devout exclama- 
tion, "He hath not dealt so with any other nation"! 

Nor are these reflections aside from the story of Lake 
Geneva. Similar and even higher, because more altruistic, 
records are written beside almost its every pier, for even 
the passengers on tourist steamers to read if they but will. 
Homes, estates, mansions, are to be seen, which, if they 
are eloquent of wealth, were not less made possible by 

[179] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

early toil and maintained by later industry. Magnifi- 
cent residences tell of the provision by fathers for their 
children, or again of the realization of the hopes of one 
generation by the affectionate memories of another. 
Acres, now of untouched forest and now of formal gar- 
dens, cared for by gardeners famous in their profession, 
evidence a love of nature and its beauty and its study. 
Side by side with these, the groups of summer homes or 
quaint little all-the-year-'round cottages manifest a simi- 
lar devotion to the same scenes of beauty unspoiled by 
the inevitable noise and dirt of factories or the worse din 
and dinginess of beer gardens and Coney Islands. And 
among these rise the white-columned porticos of educa- 
tional institutions, the long roofs that house noble phil- 
anthropies, or the summer camps of schools of that 
religion which "alone has made safe anywhere upon the 
surface of the globe the life of man or the honor of 
woman." 

The movement toward the erection of the many beauti- 
ful homes for which the Lake has long been famous began 
with the purchase in 1870 of 90 acres of land on the 
western shore of Geneva Bay by Mr. Shelton Sturges, of 
Chicago. Beside the summer villa erected the next year, 
there stood for many years the great Dutch windmill 
remembered by the oldest visitors to the Lake. On 
Mr. Sturges' death in 1887 the property passed into the 
hands of Mr. H. H. Porter, by whom and by the related 
families of Dr. R. N. Isham and his son. Dr. George S« 
Isham, the first beautiful estate has been maintained for 
fifty years in that slowly perfected charm which is the 
hallmark of years of care. 

fi8o] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The earliest years of the eighties saw the great devel- 
opment of the famous residences, at first near the town 
of Lake Geneva and later extending westward as the 
equal or superior beauty of the rest of the lake shore 
was realized. The R. T. Crane house of 1881, known as 
"Jerseyhurst," was the first of four handsome houses 
which adorn the enlarged grounds today. Among the 
later developments of the property are a remarkable 
grapery and the building that thousands of sightseers 
noted as the Russian tea house of Chicago World's Fair 
fame in 1893, which at the close of that exhibition was 
taken down, transported, and re-erected on the Crane 
estate. 

In the same year, 1881, Mr. George Sturges built 
"Snug Harbor," the place on the northern shore of Geneva 
Bay now owned by Mr. John Borden, who has retained 
its original name. The present beautiful adjoining 
Hubbard Carpenter house also occupies part of the ori- 
ginal George Sturges property. 

Other estates begun in the same year were "Alta 
Vista," the home of O. W. Potter; "Black Tofft," built 
by Mr. John T. Lester; and "Bonnie Brae," the premises 
of Judge T. F. Withrow, on the north shore of The 
Narrows, now the property of Mr. Martin A. Ryerson. 

Among the earliest of the noted families of Chicago to 
establish residence on the Lake was that of Mr. N. K. 
Fairbank, who began in 1875 ^^ influence that has been 
second to none in its variety of interests and the continued 
improvement of the family property. The first house was 
destroyed by fire within the year, but was replaced by an 
even handsomer structure. In later years the eastern 

[181] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

shore of Williams Bay, including Cedar Point, was pur- 
chased, and has remained in its original untouched wooded 
beauty. From the first Mr. Fairbank was interested in 
the improvement of the fish of the Lake and the earlier 
steps toward stocking the waters were of his initiation. 

A similar interest in the fish of Geneva was taken by 
the Leiter family, whose great house, "Linden Lodge," 
was long one of the most striking on its shores. Elaborate 
fish ponds were maintained for many years on a special 
property south of Fontana, at the head of the Lake, 
annually visited by many as one of the sights of the 
neighborhood. The Leiter family have not resided at 
the Lake recently, the home having been occupied by 
Mr. and Mrs. Seymour Morris for fifteen years. 

In 1885 Mr. Conrad Seipp purchased the beautiful 
headland known as Black Point and built the noble house 
from whose lofty observatory there may be seen almost 
the entire area of the Lake, the only point on its shores 
from which so extensive a view may be had. The sur- 
rounding grounds, originally rough and cut by ravines, 
have been modeled into graceful slopes and densely 
wooded with superb trees, all of which have been placed 
by Mr. Seipp's heirs, his daughters, Mrs. Otto Schmidt 
and Mrs. Henry Bartholomay, being the present owners. 

Another early and beautiful home is situated on the 
northern point of The Narrows, that of Mrs. S. W. 
Allerton, whose beautiful greenhouses have become widely 
famous for the roses to which the larger portion of their 
innumerable beds are devoted and from which not less 
than thirty thousand blooms have been cut in a single 
season ! 

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THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

The most notable early development along the south- 
western shore of the Lake was that of the E. E. Ayer 
estate, "Fairoaks," begun in 1875 ^^^ continuously added 
to and beautified with each succeeding year. Extending 
from the shore of the Lake to the heights of the hills far 
to the southward, the resultant private park contains 
8 miles of driveways, while the varied tastes and interests 
of its owner have made the residence the repository of 
one of the most wonderful and beautiful collections of 
objects of art and of historical interest in all America. 

Another private park, in this case including a most 
perfect little individual golf course, is the F. D. Countiss 
place on the south shore between Duck Hole and Buttons 
Bay. Amid the immense trees of this large property and 
near the South Shore Road stand the buildings which, 
when it was the property of the late James H. Moore, 
were famous throughout the Middle West for housing 
more than fifty splendid horses, whose quality and care 
formed their owner's hobby. 

A home eminent in the early days of the Lake Geneva 
colony for the brilliant qualities of its mistress, was that 
of Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth, on the south shore, adjoining 
the Countiss place on the west. Designed and built by 
her daughter, Mrs. Harold Ickes, its years of assiduous 
devotion to the preservation of its unusual natural sur- 
roundings have made it one of the beauty spots of the 
eastern half of the Lake. It was purchased in 1922 by 
Mr. Sydney Smith, the famous cartoonist. 

"The most artistic home on the Lake" is a descrip- 
tion often given of the residence of the late Mr. A. C. 
Bartlett, on the north shore, east of The Narrows, designed 

[183] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

by his son, Mr. Frederick C. Bartlett, the artist. Its 
inner court, with its fountain and flowers and the vistas 
from its windows, is one of the charming sights of the 
many beautiful homes along the shore. 

Among the dense trees on the high point that forms 
the southern corner of Geneva Bay stands the uniquely 
shaped building which has given the site its name of 
"Ceylon Point." This was the famous "Ceylon Court," 
a notable feature of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. 
At the close of the exposition it was brought to Lake 
Geneva by Mr. J. J. Mitchell, and made the nucleus of 
the residence built about it. Originally 1 50 feet long, with 
a central court octagonal in shape and 50 feet in diameter, 
composed of many varieties of Ceylonese woods, it has 
been enlarged and a second story added. The Mitchell 
farm is not less notable than the residence portion of the 
property, with its most modern stables and other buildings 
where live a herd of splendid cattle and some tremendous 
imported Belgian horses, all of which look as if always 
ready for exhibition. 

Another of the famous buildings of the Columbian 
Exposition of 1893 stands on the grounds of the home of 
Mr. and Mrs. William Wrigley, Jr., on the north shore, 
and is easily seen from passing steamers. This was the 
Norway Building, a reproduction of Norse architecture 
of the eleventh century, constructed of many varieties of 
wood and with four striking dragons' heads rising above 
the corners of the odd structure. The Wrigley estate was 
once the property of the late Mr. C. G. K. Billings. In 
Mr. Wrigley's hands it has become a great combination 
of summer home and fine stock farm, known as "Green 

[184] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Gables," with a most brilliant "formal garden" beside the 
elaborate entrance to the lake shore portion of the grounds. 

Quite the most stately residence on the same shore is 
that of Mr. W. W. Shaw, known as "Wadsworth Hall." 
Originally built by the late Mr. N. W. Harris, the grounds 
were laid out by the Olmstead Brothers of Brookline, 
Massachusetts. Mr. A. W. Harris, of the same Chicago 
firm of bankers, is the owner of the striking red-roofed 
home in a Spanish style of architecture on the high ridge 
of ground between Lake Geneva and its neighboring 
Lake Como, commanding a view of both. Visible for 
several miles in every direction, it is well known to every 
motorist, as are its nearby farm properties with their 
beautiful saddle horses and herd of fat Hereford cattle. 

A recent publication dealing with the most notable 
private residences of America has singled out one of the 
homes on the shores of Lake Geneva as most worthy of de- 
tailed description and illustration. This is the Charles L. 
Hutchinson property, on the north shore, known as 
"Wychwood." Designed throughout by the Olmsteads, 
no place on the Lake has had more thought and care 
bestowed on its every detail, from the first inception of 
the home to the present perfection of maintained natural 
beauty. Unlike some more artifically arranged grounds, 
Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson have from the first kept almost 
unaltered the natural aspect of the forest which em- 
bowers the home. The very approach and driveway 
through the grounds is a perfect bit of woods road, sur- 
rounded by a wonderful development of wild flowers, 
on which both Mr. and Mrs. Hutchinson are recognized 
authorities. Thousands of dafibdills, violets, hepaticas, 

[185] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

and anemones grow in superb color groups among the 
trees, while before the great house, almost concealed 
by its covering vines, masses of forsythia in the spring 
and of goldenrod in the later summer and early fall 
form a glorious setting. The natural denizens of the 
woods are given every encouragement to continue their 
occupation of these, with the result that every season 
a dozen nests are built close beside windows and doors, 
and the chipmunks play unafraid across the brick floors of 
the sunny verandas and apply to their human friends for 
seeds and grains that they know await them. The first 
of the beautiful Kentucky cardinals which in recent years 
have come to live on the Lake shores, as described in our 
chapter on its birds, having been seen on Mr. Hutchinson's 
grounds, he imported and released a female of the species, 
the pair promptly going to housekeeping. Their des- 
cendants are believed to be those who form their brilliant 
addition to the bird life of the surrounding countryside. 

One of the largest areas under any one ownership in 
the Lake country is composed of the properties of Mr. 
S. B. Chapin, of New York City, who spends much of the 
year in this western summer home. From near The 
Narrows his many acres run northward to include a 
considerable portion of the shore of Lake Como. Around 
the residence they form superb lawns, while their northern 
meadows and fruit orchards surround the great barns 
where live the beautiful Swiss Brown cattle which every 
passing motorist notes with admiration. 

One may not go on, however, to name still more of 
the nearly two hundred beautiful private estates which 
charm the eye of the visitor to the Lake, whether he makes 

[1 86] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

its rounds by steamer before their piers, by the "lake 
shore path" which crosses them all, or by motor on the 
roads that reach them from the landward side. Every 
one of them is dear to the true lover oi the Lake, not 
more for their beauty and their often lavish American 
magnificence than because each testifies that its residents 
have chosen Geneva's charms for the surroundings of 
their happiest days, and that they hope that their posterity 
after them may continue to do so — in saecula saeculorum. 
The aspect of the Lake in the height of the mid- 
summer season is enough to make one wish that one might 
add to these pages a description of the handsome private 
steam launches and splendid modern power boats which 
course its waters and add so much to the vividness of 
the gay and busy social life and scenes of the vacation 
months. Even more in number and of keener interest to 
their owners and crews are the scores of yachts whose 
annual joys and thrills find their climax in the August 
interlake regatta of the Inland Lake Yachting Associa- 
tion, for whose week of daily races many of the rival 
boats are regularly brought overland by "trailers" to 
whatever body of water is the scene of the competitions. 
In these contests there regularly meet the fastest craft of 
Geneva and lakes Winnebago, Oconomowoc, Pewaukee, 
Pine Lake, and even distant Minnetonka. The local 
annual sailing classic is, of course, the ancient and hon- 
orable race for the "Sheridan Cup," well known wherever 
American yachtsmen meet, from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. Instituted in 1874, it was named in honor 
of General Philip Sheridan, who was among the specta- 
tors at the time. Held in the last week in August of 

[187] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

each year, it is open to the local "Class A" boats. Its 
trophy, whose possession carries with it the champion- 
ship for the year, is really not a "cup" at all, but a 
beautiful silver model of a famous yacht, the "Nettie," 
the winner of the race for the first two years and in whose 
honor the design of the prize was chosen. The name of 
each year's winner is engraved on the silver base of the 
trophy, with the owner's name and the date. 

On the south shore of the Lake, near the southern 
point of The Narrows, lie the beautiful emerald stretches 
of the Lake Geneva Country Club, its broad golf links 
extending southward from the lakeside eminence where 
stands the architecturally exquisite clubhouse. More 
than any other one spot the Country Club is the center 
of the social life of the entire Lake, and its brilliant 
occasions are noted in the society events of the entire 
country. 

Nor are the long-established institutions of life beside 
Lake Geneva confined to individual homes and the sum- 
mer gaieties and pleasures of its fortunate residents. 
Several of its choicest locations are the sites of institu- 
tions of scientific pursuit, of education and culture, or 
devoted to giving good times and happy hours to those 
who otherwise might not have such opportunities. 

Of the first class the most justly famous is, of course, 
the great Yerkes Astronomical Observatory of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, to whose description we give, as it 
deserves, a chapter of its own. Perhaps next to it in 
honor ought to stand its not far distant neighbor, the 
institution known to thousands of grateful Chicago fami- 
ihes as "Holiday Home." Begun in March, 1887, the 

[188] 



i 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

principal building was completed in the summer of the 
next year. Conceived by a group of philanthropic women 
of Chicago, its purpose has been from the first the pro- 
vision of several weeks of outdoor life for groups of chil- 
dren, of their mothers, of elderly women, and of younger 
women, who but for the gift of such outings might not 
be able to leave the heat and strain of the city in the 
summertime. Its affairs are now administered and its 
funds provided chiefly by the generosity of many of the 
women of the summer colony. 

An institution of somewhat similar object but different 
management is that of Olivet Camp, directly beside the 
Holiday Home, a large summer camp maintained for 
many years by the Olivet Presbyterian Church of Chicago. 

Of the institutions of education, culture, and recreation 
on Geneva's shores, undoubtedly the most widely known 
is that originally founded as the "Western Secretarial 
Institute" of the Young Men's Christian Association. 
While its name has changed it has never ceased its close 
connection with the great international association for 
the cultivation of the Christian life among young men and 
young women of many lands. Begun with the interesting 
and appropriate ceremony of a "dedicatory camp fire" 
on the evening of August 12, 1886, its interests, the de- 
mands upon its facilities, the extension of its properties, and 
the modernization of its equipment have continued for 
nearly forty years of sterling influence. Every summer 
sees successive groups of Y.M.C.A. workers, young people 
of the Young Men's and Young Women's Associations of 
the country, the cities, the colleges, and often other organ- 
izations, gathered here for regular instruction in religious 

[189] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

educational lines and for training in the physical culture 
and education which are rightly inseparable from these. 
Today an adjunct of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion College of Chicago, it is practically the summer 
session of that institution. Housing its hundreds of 
guests chiefly in tents, its many other buildings provide 
a great assembly hall, classrooms, a large reading-room 
and office building, a vast many-tabled dining-hall, and a 
huge modern kitchen. Its recreation advantages include 
swimming and boating facilities on the lake shore, many 
tennis courts and an athletic field and golf links. The last 
two are on the high ground above the lakeside and adjoin 
the famous grounds and structure of the Yerkes Observa- 
tory. To this great center there come every summer not 
only young men and women of earnest spirit from all over 
the country, but many delegates, teachers, and speakers 
from all over the globe, so that the influence of this 
institution on Geneva's shores is literally world-wide. 

Apropos of institutions of this nature, the older resi- 
dents of the Lake remember with affection the "plain 
living and high thinking" that for almost a score of years 
made beloved of many a simple resort known as " Camp 
Collie," which occupied the high and wooded promontory 
now called "Conference Point," the western point of 
Williams Bay. Owned and conducted by Rev. Joseph 
Collie, D.D., for forty years the pastor of the Congrega- 
tional church in the town of Delavan, it became the 
favorite resort of an unusual class of people of simple 
tastes and devotion to the intellectual and religious life. 
Its influence is today remembered by many as among 
the happiest experiences of the families who were accus- 

[190] 




OS ^ 

z 

< 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

tomed to spend their vacations on its heights and on the 
beaches and waters below. Among other movements 
which on these occasions had no small influence was the 
formation of the nation-wide affiliation of the Young 
Women's Christian Associations of the various states, 
whose united relation to one another was inaugurated 
here. 

Just west of the "West Beach" of "old Camp Collie" 
stands another notable institution, Eleanor Camp, the 
summer home every year of hundreds of the members of 
the Eleanor clubs for girls and young women. 

Other clubs, largely of groups of acquaintances or 
residents of individual towns, have long occupied points 
of natural charm around the Lake. These usually con- 
sist of groups of privately owned cottages grouped around 
central recreation halls, dining-rooms, club houses, hotels, 
and the like, according to the tastes and objects of the 
original association of friends and neighbors. Among 
the earliest of these were the Elgin Club on the north 
shore; the Harvard Club, Belvidere Camp, the Chicago 
Club, and Marengo Park on the south shore; and Congress 
Club on the west shore of Williams Bay. Each of these 
has had a history of over forty years of happy and inti- 
mate summer associations on the part of their members 
and component families. Later similar organizations have 
been Rockford Camp, between the Eleanor Club and the 
Y.M.C.A. grounds; the group at Glenwood Springs at 
the southwestern curve at the head of the Lake; and 
Buena Vista Park, just east of Fontana, whose site occu- 
pies that of the Pottawatomie Indian village of the earliest 
history of the Lake. 

[191] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

One of the earliest public institutions about the Lake 
was the famous " Kaye's Park," opened in the early- 
seventies and soon a popular resort for the visitors who 
sought the conveniences of a summer hotel, with its partic- 
ular variety of social life and gaiety. For many years 
it retained its distinctive popularity, being the scene of 
many conventions and other summer occasions, and its 
grounds even occupied at times by the summer encamp- 
ments of units of Illinois or Wisconsin militia, whose 
drills and sham battles drew great crowds to the scene. 
An interesting feature of "old Kaye's Park" was the 
Wyant Museum which stood on the grounds and whose 
unusual display of interesting and varied curiosities gave 
many a fascinated child its first taste of a love for such 
collections and the information they convey. 

In 191 1 a large part of the site of this famous old park 
was purchased by the Northwestern Military and Naval 
Academy, a secondary school for boys, then located at 
Highland Park, Illinois. After using the grounds for a 
number of years as the scene of unique outdoor sessions 
of the school each summer and fall, the present great 
white building with its lofty-pillared portico and wings 
became the permanent home of the institution. Facing 
across the wide, tree-surrounded parade ground toward 
the blue Lake, it is impressive and dignified even in the 
comparative tenantlessness of the summer season, when 
perhaps most tourists and visitors see it. But during the 
rest of the year, when its unusual surroundings of lawn 
and forest are the scene of the busy activities of more 
than two hundred brilliantly uniformed students and 
officers, it presents pictures of a training, spirit, and fun 

[192] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

which any virile boy would give anything within his power 
to be able to share. Ranked by the War Department in 
the highest class of the military schools under its inspec- 
tion, it has been lavishly equipped with governmental 
and other materials, including tanks, artillery, a fleet of 
automobiles for purposes of study and maneuver, machine 
guns, wireless outfits, ambulances, and the like. Through 
the natural woods that cover a large part of the grounds, 
and on either side of the winding roadway, the students 
themselves have constructed an elaborate system of 
trenches where corresponding tactics can be carried on. 
Essentially a school designed to prepare for college or 
university entrance, its honorable record of four hundred 
(80 per cent) of its alumni in their country's service during 
the world-war demonstrates what manner of men its 
influences have tended to make of those who have passed 
through its doors. The writer has watched its activities 
under Colonel Royal P. Davidson for many years, and 
the more he has noted the snap and spirit of the willing 
self-discipline of its young men, the more he has wished 
that every boy in the land could go to such a school as 
this, where one cannot but learn that it is only by "drilling 
one's self" — as St. Paul said long ago — that the honorable 
accomplishments of life are prepared for. 

The motor car and its development of cross-country 
touring and camping have had a marked effect on the 
summer population of the Lake, and one which is destined 
greatly to increase in the future. On a day in the summer 
of 1922 the County Highway Commission made a count 
of the traffic on State Route No. 50, between the towns 
of Geneva and Delavan, and discovered that not less than 

[193] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

thirty-two hundred cars passed a given point between the 
hours of six in the morning and eleven at night ! For many 
years without other railroad access than from Chicago, the 
Lake has now become a Mecca for motor tourists from 
every direction and every part of the country. Residents 
of the Gulf states on their annual escape from the mid- 
summer heat now make it their goal, as the cars from 
Florida and Louisiana testify. Especially from the south- 
west comes much of the new migration, due to the com- 
pletion of the concrete highways from St. Louis to Chicago, 
by which route the 360 miles between the cities are often 
covered in a day. Transcontinental touring parties include 
a visit to Geneva's shores in their itinerary. Especially 
the motor campers come in ever increasing numbers. 
Every day from the first of June to the first of October 
sees cars, big and little, laden with camping outfits and 
khaki-clad and sunburned folk, pausing to scan the road- 
sides around the Lake for likely camping spots. On 
"week-ends" their numbers double; over legal holidays — 
Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Labor Day — 
they increase tenfold. The opening of the wooded eastern 
shore of Williams Bay for camping purposes has drawn 
these traveling visitors in surprising numbers. Over the 
Fourth of July week-end of 1921 not less than eleven 
hundred such campers filled the half-mile of forested 
shore along the blue waters of the Bay! 

The automobile has literally created a new epoch in 
the history of civilization in America. In greater ease and 
speed of local and interurban transportation, in extending 
the suburbs of cities by the facility with which the bus- 
iness district may be reached from distant homes, in 

[194] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

affording the farming population a new and ready access 
to markets or shipping points, in bringing formerly isolated 
communities into touch with the conveniences of towns 
and cities, its effect upon the business and social relation- 
ships of the entire country is increasingly amounting to 
nothing less than a new age of an undreamed-of contact 
of every part of the nation with every other. Students 
of life in the southern states testify to the transforming 
effect of the readiness with which former remote and 
unprogressive neighborhoods may now reach centers of 
financial, social, educational, and religious benefits and 
influences. It "works both ways," bringing the country 
to the city, and the city to the country. The wife of 
a farmer in Sawyer County, Wisconsin, in the northern 
part of the state, living fifteen miles from the nearest 
village, said to the writer: "Thank God for Henry 
Ford! In the twenty years that we have lived here 
we have never been able to go to church once; and now 
we can go every Sunday!" Everywhere the intelligence 
of youth and older years is discovering anew the beauty 
of the country, its rural charms and attractions, and 
the book of nature is being read for the first time by 
many who in other years have been more or less neces- 
sarily confined to city streets for their livelihood and 
to city parks for their recreations. During an enlist- 
ment at one of the great army training camps for civilian 
soldiers, in 191 6, the writer met another "rookie" whose 
unrestrainable astonishment at every revelation of the 
countrysides traversed on the line of march revealed that 
he actually did not know the name of a single kind of 
tree, of a single variety of flower, or of a single species of 

[195] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

bird, as these were seen en route! Born in a city apart- 
ment and brought up wholly amid huge city-street 
canyons, his mind was devoid of the slightest knowledge 
of anything outside such conditions! The more than ten 
million automobiles of America are today eliminating the 
possibility of such a mental state for any city dweller 
in the land. Of the new day of our national culture. 
Lake Geneva and its neighborhood is destined to become 
one of the most charming and informing of all scenes 
through which this emancipation shall conduct those of 
the seeing eye and the hearing ear. The stage of enlarged 
industrial opportunities to one generation, of a fascinating 
beauty and recreation to the next, to the third it will be 
one of the beautiful schools for the awakening of the new 
mind of the nation. 



:i96] 



CHAPTER XI 
AROUND THE YEAR ON LAKE GENEVA 

What is the message of Lake Geneva? What is its 
great contribution to the life of its devotees? What 
charm do some find in its aspects of water and earth and 
sky, throughout the changing year or at the season with 
which they are most famihar, which draws them back 
to it ever and again ? What spell moves others to plan 
to spend as much as possible of their very lifetimes within 
sight of its blue, its wooded hills and pebbled beaches, 
and beneath its skies, now azure as Italy's own, now 
gray with promise of autumn's gold and winter's snow ? 

First answers are prompt and varied. The "kids" 
come "for fun," for their own "days of real sport," for 
the delights of getting out of doors all day long and 
wearing clothes that they do not have to worry about, 
for wading and sailing boats of all sorts and fishing off 
the piers and going in swimming several times a day and 
going on trips on the steamers and going with the grown- 
ups in rowboats or in the family car and playing with 
"all the other kids" at the resorts or in the parks or on 
the beach and — "an' oh! an' ever'thing!" We know: 
we were one of them once; and perhaps are still! 

The motor camper comes for the fun of camping out, 
and for all the informal experiences that go with it, from 
loafing and having nothing to do, to having no end of 
things to do, in catching the fish for the next meal, or 
getting out of one's outfit all it is supposed to provide 
for convenience or fun. He comes in ever increasing 

[197] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

numbers, too. More than one hundred such parties — 
cars, tents, and all — occupied one camping site along the 
shore over a single week-end in the summer of 1922. 

The fisherman comes for the fishing, and if he knows 
the place and the game he rarely comes in vain. He may 
be the small boy with bamboo pole and worm can who 
knows that a little patience is certain to enable him to 
march proudly home with a long string of perch and 
rock bass "to show the folks." Or he may be the skilled 
wielder of a favorite casting rod and its many lures — fly 
or spoon or big live minnow, the last the best of all for 
Geneva's finest fish. If he knows where to go for his 
casts or his trolling, he will not go home empty-handed. 
There are brook trout in Lake Geneva, remember! — and, 
only occasionally taken as yet, their numbers are increas- 
ing every year. There are bass of every size, and pickerel, 
and huge pike which are capable of making their captor 
think he has hooked a northern "muskie"! 

Many visitors come just to do nothing, save what the 
mood of the moment or the events of the days may move 
them to do. Some come just to rest, and to be glad to be 
able to do it. Some come to dash to places and things in 
their big new cars, to meet other folks of their own tastes, 
to make new acquaintances, and to feel that this, after all, 
is the way to live. The swimmers come to show their 
skill, and to acquire more intimacy with the water and 
its conquest. Marvels of amphibian ability some of them 
are, powerful young fellows and splendid, half-mermaid 
girls. Some, one fancies, come to display "the latest 
thing" in smart bathing suits; and, incidentally, quite a 
little of their shapely selves more or less inside the same 

[198] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

suits, too; or so one would infer from a survey of any 
hundred of them on any beach, on hot July afternoons. 

The amateur navigators come to delight in their 
water craft. These range all the way. from the latest 
brand-new rowboat with its "putt-putt" attachment to 
the brightly colored canoes that drift lazily beneath the 
shade trees along the shore, or from the big power boats 
that tear foaming from end to end of the Lake in record 
time to the splendid white-sailed sloops of regatta week 
or the race for the Sheridan Trophy and the local cham- 
pionship. 

Naturalists come to indulge themselves to their hearts' 
content in whatever their particular nature hobby may be. 
Some wander through the woods, notebook, birdbook, 
field glass, and pencil in hand, wherewith to swell their 
season's list to as near as possible the hundred-and-fifty- 
odd varieties of birds that perhaps constitute the "record" 
of the keenest and most assiduous — and generally the 
earliest riser — of them all. Or it may be only mushrooms 
that they are studying; and there are plenty of them, 
from the giant puffball or the rare, pale, and lovely 
"Indian pipe" to the worse-than-a-skunk kind whose 
horrid odor leads the thirty-second-degree mycologist 
eagerly to follow its scent to its origin — and drives every- 
one else to flee the fetid neighborhood! Or it may be — no 
one can say what major or minor department of the infinite 
variety of Nature's aspects that tempt her truest and 
best-informed and most expert devotees. One man came 
wholly to study the parasites to be found in the "innards" 
of fish, coming equipped with special government license 
that allowed him to do, in the name of science, many 

[199I 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

things forbidden to less famous fishermen, and with 
seines and gill nets and microscopes and specimen jars 
and dissecting knives — aye, and with a diving outfit 
wherewith to go down and walk around on the bottom 
and study the finny inhabitants at the closest possible 
range! Verily, de gustibus nil disputandum! 

Astronomers come — famous men, from all over the 
world, looking as if they knew all that man has yet learned 
about the stars, as many of them do, indeed. The Yerkes 
Observatory is the magnet for them, of course. They have 
been known to strike straight cross-country with its 
great dome as their goal, with no delay to go around by 
the roads, in their eagerness to reach the marvels they 
have long hoped to see. A Catholic priest broke through 
some bushes bordering a woodland and emerged upon a 
roadway to startle the first passer-by with the question: 
"Which way to the Observatory ?" — and on receiving a 
gestured indication dived anew into the woods like a 
rabbit, on the shortest line to his destination. An eminent 
star specialist from the East, who had doubtless noted 
on his map that the great institution was near Kenosha 
but who had failed to note the scale of "magnificent 
distances" of the middle western states, sprang from a 
train at Kenosha and into a taxicab, shouting to the 
driver, "To the Yerkes Observatory!" He got there, but 
the memory of the bill he paid for the trip will doubtless 
cause him to examine the map with more care the next 
time he goes anywhere in the West! 

Everyone else goes to the Observatory, too, during 
the season, arriving in summer-garbed crowds of hundreds 
at a time, every summer Saturday afternoon, to crowd 

[200] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

up the marble steps into the gallery around the inside of 
the great dome and listen and marvel while the spectacled 
and endlessly patient men of science explain to the 
average mind what is done there, and why, and how. 

But all this is during the "season," from June i to 
September i of each year. During this time a hundred 
thousand people alight from the trains at Lake Geneva 
village or motor in from everywhere between the Atlantic 
and the Pacific. Eleven thousand of them are more or 
less "summer residents" of the village for the period of 
their vacations, where for the time they outnumber the 
citizens of the place forty to one. Forty thousand reach 
Williams Bay and its cottages, homes, resorts, or camps, 
by car or train. Nineteen hundred left the Bay on a 
single train on the last Sunday night of the vacation season 
in 1922. Ten thousand stream in and out of the noble 
doors of the Observatory on the twenty most crowded 
Saturday afternoons of the summertime. An annual 
total of several thousand stay at the various conference 
periods of the Y.M.C.A. grounds alone, many a famous 
track athlete among them, putting in his summer study- 
ing, working, and keeping in condition by daily work-outs 
on the athletic grounds on the hilltop. A Chicago 
football team begins its annual training by a week of 
assiduous practice there — and went through its last season 
without a defeat, in consequence! 

And so they come, and go, and plan to come again 
next summer, and in the meantime retell their particular 
version of Geneva's offered delights and pleasures and 
profits and fun. And annually their number swells by 
no small proportion of those who have heard the tale and 

[201] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

resolve that for their next vacation they, too, will plan 
for Lake Geneva's joys. 

But what about the rest of the year, before and after 
the "season" and the midsummer months ? Is it a case 
of "nothing doing," as a girl clerk in one of Geneva's 
stores assured us ? When the motor boats are housed 
for the winter, and the sails of the sloops are furled and 
the masts unshipped, and the water grows too cold for 
any swimmers save the great flocks of Canada geese and 
the bluebills and the mud hens and the solitary, diving, 
"laughing" loons, and the summer houses have the 
shutters put up, and the tents are all down — what of 
Lake Geneva then ? 

For one thing, if you are interested in knowing — and 
many there are who will be — the weather "isn't half bad," 
the whole year around. As a matter of fact, it is often 
as largely fair and beautiful and fascinating in January 
as it was the August before. There are figures to prove 
it, too, for the big Observatory keeps a record of it, 
twice in every twenty-four hours. This record is given 
in Table L And the "precipitation" — scientific style 
for rain or melted snow — is given on Table II, 
page 203. 

Nor do they stop with these strictly meteorological 
records. They recognize that it is not quite enough to 
be able to inform us as to just how hot or how cold it 
has been and therefore will be again, or how wet or how 
dry, and what the farmer and the picnicker may anticipate 
in the way of rainfall or clear skies. They keep a record 
also of what they call the "human" aspect and estimate of 
the days, the character of the weather as ordinary human 

[202] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 



TABLE I 

Monthly Average Temperature on Lake Geneva 

Recorded at the Yerkes Observatory, 

Fifteen Years, 1903-18 

Temperature 
Month (Degrees 

- Fahrenheit) 

January 19.-7 

February 19. g 

March ZZ-'^ 

April 45.1 

May 55.8 

June 65.0 

July 70.7 

August 67 . 8 

September 62.1 

October 49-7 

November 37-7 

December 23,9 

Annual average 45-86 

TABLE II 

Monthly Average Precipitation at Lake Geneva, 

Recorded at the Yerkes Observatory, 

Fifteen Years, 1903-18 

(Rainfall or melted snow) 
Month Inches 

January 1,50 

February i . 19 

March i.yy 

April a. 48 

May 3.90 

June 3.16 

July 3-48 

August 4.01 

September 3-72 

October 2.43 

November 1.64 

December 1.38 

Annual average 30-67 



[203] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

beings delight in it and call it "fine," or shiver or broil 
in it and call it "rotten." For this purpose they group 
every day as it comes and goes, in one or another of four 
classes. An "A day" represents for its season what 
would be called a perfect day, an A day in January 
naturally representing a very different state as to temper- 
ature from that of an A day in July. On each such day 
the sun must shine, practically without clouds, during 
the entire day, and no annoyingly high wind may disturb 
its serenity. B presents the next grade of "pleasant" 
day, characterized by a large amount of sunshine, though 
there may be some clouds, and perhaps a tiny, passing 
shower. This class includes the greatest number of days, 
here, as perhaps everywhere. C represents a day that 
is practically cloudy throughout, and may be accompanied 
by considerable rain or snow. The lowest grade of all, 
the designation D, is reserved for what we call wretched 
weather — as bad as could be expected for any particular 
season, simply, "vile weather" in fact. 

What kind of weather, then, will the Lake Geneva 
region give you, a whole year around? The exact record 
for a full year, 1921, is given in Table III on page 205. 

Thus it will appear that even in January there were 
eleven perfect days. B days were commonly called fine 
days, so that if we combine the A and B days, it will 
appear that 265 days throughout the entire year were 
pleasant, or almost three out of four. 

Face to face with an actual record like that, let 
Floridians and Californians boast as they may! Granted 
that wintertime is delightful on the sandy peninsula 
where the oranges and grapefruit hang big and golden 

[204] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

and the strawberry beds ripen from October to July; 
where the mocking birds, like Moore's nightingale "beside 
Bendemeer's stream," sing all the day long. But what 
of the rest of the year, when the Florida auto-license 
plates are early seen and linger late along Geneva's 
roads? And southern California's famous "chief asset** 
is charmingly semitropical, of course, where one never 

TABLE III 

A Year's Weather at Lake Geneva, Recorded at the 
Yerkes Observatory 



Year 192 i 



January. . 
February . 
March ... 

April 

May 

June 

July 

August. . . 
September 
October . . 
November 
December . 

Total . 



Kend or Days 



7 
4 
8 

15 
10 
16 



12 
4 
3 



"3 



15 
15 
16 

13 
10 

14 

13 

15 

9 



16 



152 



16 
9 



14 



has to shovel either snow or coal and where palms and 
fruit groves and mountain sides and beach surf combine 
for the tourist's delight — and to assault his pocket-book 
assiduously the while! But can these be counted upon 
to be wholly charming for not less than 75 per cent of all 
the hours of all the year, as Lake Geneva's hours can be ? 
It is cold in midwinter, of course. At express-train 
speed the white-winged ice boats glide over the gleaming 

[205] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

expanse. Acres of ice are crowded with men and teams 
cutting the big glittering cubes for your next summer's 
ice box. The astronomers at the Yerkes Observatory 
have been known to have to go to their tasks in the big 
building over the great snowdrifts on skis or snowshoes. 
But let the city dweller, who spends his winter between 
the apartment house and the office or department-store 
skyscraper, have one look at one of those landscapes 
of marvelous, unbroken, unspotted whiteness stretching 
over hill and vale from horizon to horizon, with the 
lakes gleaming diamond-like in the hollows, and he will 
think it a new and more glorious world than he has ever 
seen! 

And the spring! Words are poor things wherewith 
to try to describe the scarlet-flushing tree tips that with 
the returning sap turn the hills red beyond belief. 
Presently this gives way to a hundred shades of green, 
from palest jade to gleaming emerald, as the elm buds 
mass themselves in the forest tops and amid them the 
"red maples" come out in glowing, new-cast bronze 
before turning into the familiar deep green of June. 
And for color — wait till you have seen the white and red 
trilHums, snow white or deep Pompeiian red, that form 
solid beds through the waking forests, here and there 
among them masses of velvety anemones and hepaticas 
and great patches of big violets looking up at the passer-by 
with eyes blue as the sky itself! 

The birds ^. We have spoken of those in their own 
chapter. But after you have sat at a breakfast table on 
the porch, on some gentle and charming spring morning, 
and listened to the ceaseless chorus from every treetop 

[206] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

around you, and perhaps tossed your breakfast crumbs 
to the robins and grackles on the lawn, from that hour all 
birds will have a place and a contribution in your life 
that you were never so fortunate as to share with them 
before. 

The fall? The autumn on Lake Geneva has the 
Midas-touch that turns everything to gold, a gold that 
"neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, nor thieves break 
through and steal " ! It comes with August's first gleaming 
wayside banners of all the nearly fifty different varieties 
of the goldenrod, turns the very stubble fields to shining 
acres, spreads till every forest tree stands in gold to its 
topmost twig, and when it falls, does so only to pave 
with gold the country roadways before the motorist's 
wheels. A single autumn morning stands out in the 
writer's experience as one of the literally golden days of 
a life's experience of all out-of-doors, half the world over. 
It was on a day in the first week of October, on a motor trip 
from the Lake to Milwaukee, when it seemed as if every 
single tree in the world had overnight turned to fresh, 
gleaming, new-minted gold. The Lake itself at dawn was 
a great sapphire in a golden rim, the rural roads miles of 
gold-arched avenues, holding us breathless and silent as 
we drove along, through a series of landscapes turned 
more uniformly to one solid glory of color than any we 
could remember ever having seen. 

Nor do the shades of color constitute all the beauties 
of the fall. In its earlier weeks the birds resume their 
singing for a brief period before starting on their south- 
ward journey. Then they begin to gather in flocks after 
their kind, bluebirds by the dozens twittering along the 

[207] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

roads, robins by the score fattening for the long trip to 
the Gulf, blackbirds massing in flocks which often string 
out for a mile or more, or turn black the reed tops of 
some swamp as they descend in their foraging armies. 
The smaller birds, the warblers and vireos, are the first 
to leave. Their chirps and calls are heard continually 
on the first cool nights as they pass overhead. During 
the daytime they are found in numbers in the same 
haunts where they were first seen in the spring, winging 
or hopping among the bushes and shrubs on the sunny 
slopes of hillsides and ravines, calling to one another, 
and working their united way more or less southward 
as they feed along. Oddly enough, the smallest of 
all, the humming-bird, often lingers till the last of Sep- 
tember. One wonders if he, too, foregathers with his 
kind for the long trip. What a sight a flock of humming 
birds would be, if one could see them together on their 
way. Occasionally a family of belated nestlings turns 
out barely in time to learn how to use their wings before 
joining the southbound swarms. A pair of mourning 
doves on the Observatory hill raised their last brood — 
doubtless their second or third of the season — so late 
one year that during the first sharply chill days the 
nesting; parent would refuse to leave the young birds 
uncovered, even for food, and it was not until the morning 
of the twenty-fourth of September that they made their 
first flight, and doubtless headed southward as fast as 
the older ones could hurry their children along. 

With the first days of the fall comes the vanguard of 
the water fowl. Companies of killdeer plover flash their 
scores of white wings along every beach or beside every 

[208] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

upland pond as they sweep here and there with that 
unanimity of curve and rise that so astonished the poet 
Wordsworth. The coots gather in dark-gray flocks to 
bob along the reedy shores of every inlet, to rise with a 
roar of splashing feet as some hidden gunner bags his 
reward for having waited through the darkness and chill 
before sunrise for just such a chance. The blue-winged 
teal are the first of the ducks to pass on their southward 
way, and not a few of them are dropped by the hunter 
who knows their preference for the shallows of creeks and 
inlets and posts himself there for the morning of that 
sixteenth of September which is as eagerly awaited, and 
by thousands more, than ever is England's or Scotland's 
historic twelfth of August on moor and brae. The larger 
ducks come as late as possible, waiting till the freezing 
of the northern waters forces them on, lingering beside 
each favorite feeding ground till the first "skim" of shore 
ice or the first whifFs of snow from graying skies sends their 
silhouetted string or V-shaped flock against the early 
sunset, southward bound. The great Canada geese 
arrive in November and remain, undaunted by any 
weather that still leaves open water for their nightly 
gatherings, betaking themselves by day to distant corn- 
fields and uplands for food. So alert are they, and so 
constant their change of feeding places, that the gunner 
who brings one to bag for his Thanksgiving dinner will 
have thoroughly earned it by many hours of half- 
benumbed motionlessness in his pit-blind, or by more 
than one half-the-night-long trip to some discovered 
feeding ground, only to have the big birds refuse to come 
to it that day. 

[209] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

A nature lover whose favorite study for many years 
has been the aspect of Lake Michigan's inland sea as seen 
from one of the majestic heights of its western shore, has 
commented that it is like nothing as much as a mighty 
kaleidescope. Moved by the innumerable influences of 
sun and cloud and wind and wave, no two periods of 
five minutes together are exactly alike, even on the stillest 
day. Before one's eyes the colors change and come and 
go with smooth shiftings from one sweep of beauty into 
another, from the dazzling whiteness of the horizon 
beneath the just rising sun, to the deep turquoise of half- 
past four in the afternoon, with a western wind to turn 
the backs of the waves up in a purple-blue that Lydia of 
Thyatira never matched with her dyes. But if Lake 
Michigan's vastness can so shift and change, what of 
Geneva's quick alternations from the delicate opal-green 
of a hot summer afternoon on her "lineless, level floors," 
to the silken, lilac ripples that quiver across from shore 
to shore before some vagrant breeze, and the rolling, 
white-capped blue that rises swift and thrilling on a 
windy day ? A kaleidescope is nothing for comparison ! 
That is to compare natural beauty with the stiffly 
patterned handiwork of some human workshop. But to 
watch Geneva for an hour on an "A day" is to see Him 
still at work who "hath made everything beautiful in 
its time" — whether that time be the uncounted years of 
a geological epoch or but a radiant minute on a swiftly 
passing summer afternoon! 

To be familiar with the Lake's innumerable landscape 
aspects under varying atmospheric conditions is to realize 
the correctness of the technique of all the great landscape 

[210] 




D 
O 
t« 

X 

t- 

r W 

9 ^ 

Pi o 

- o 

— CO 

— : o 
_ < 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

painters in their endeavors to preserve such hours of 
pecuhar beauty. The color masses of an Inness, the pale 
grays and greens of a Puvis des Chavannes, the blending 
shades of a Birge Harrison, the startlingly mirror-like 
landscapes of a Claude Lorrain, the deliciously rich 
vividness of Maxfield Parrish, the translucent green of 
breaking shore waves as Alexander Harrison caught them — 
all these may be seen on one day or another by whosoever 
will watch for them. Almost above all these, there is, 
occasionally, an especial magnificence which is at once 
so rare and so wonderful as to richly reward the observer 
who watches for it. Perhaps not unknown in almost 
any landscape, it is at its best in an atmosphere so 
especially transparent as that which largely decided the 
selection of the hills about the Lake for the great glass 
of the Yerkes Observatory. This is the occurrence of 
a day — sometimes of but a few hours during the day — of 
an absolutely unsurpassable clearness, without the slight- 
est trace of dimming or haziness in even the very farthest 
vista. If the scientists have their mentioned class of 
"A days" as "perfect days," these periods of absolutely 
sharp clearness of every object and detail, near or far, to 
the very horizon, ought to be classed as "A plus" days. 
In their highest perfection they are not common. Over 
Lake Michigan, for instance, with the faint haziness 
almost invariable over its large body of water, there may 
not be more than a half-dozen days of such absolute 
clarity throughout the whole year. On Lake Geneva there 
may be one or two a month, chiefly in the months of the 
clearest skies and the least moisture in the air. On 
such a day the individual trees of the woods on the 

[211] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

Opposite shore stand out with striking distinctness. 
Distant objects, colors, and picturesque effects are seen 
with a telescopic brilliance. A view across country over 
the farm lands of the Lake neighborhood seems unbeliev- 
able in the distances at which one can see, with startling 
clearness, the sunlit shoulders of hills, masses of woods, 
village roofs, farmsteads with their red barns and the clean 
white towers of the ever present silos, or, from some 
elevation, the appealing blue of the lakes embowered 
amid these. 

Even Keats' climax note: 

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know 

is inadequate to contain or to express all the charm and 
the message of Lake Geneva, in sun or storm. The single 
sentence of John Burroughs, the mystic-naturalist, comes 
near it when he wrote: "I have no words wherewith to 
express the feelings which move me at the mere aspects of 
earth and sky and sea .... and perhaps these are 
the great helps, after all." 

They are, indeed! And there are "no words" for 
them, unless it be such words as William Herbert Carruth's 
enchanted line: 

And some of us call it Autumn — and some of us call it God! 

Perhaps the most wholly thrilling and unforgettable 
views of the Lake's majesty of beauty and surroundings 
is to be obtained only in the literal "bird's-eye view" 
of it from an airplane. To afford the most varied and 
colorful aspect the trip should be made at harvest time. 
Then, from a height of two or three thousand feet, one's 

[212] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

breath is literally taken away, hardly more by the swift 
rush of the machine than by the glories of the brilliant 
landscape spread out below — a vast map in the loveliest 
of natural colors. The lakes are seen all in one great 
vista, looking strangely near together, and then they may 
be studied separately as the great machine wheels above 
them. Como's blue is seen dotted with tiniest fishing 
boats near the stretch of verdant marshes at either end; 
Delavan's sapphire is found to have irregular outlines 
and green peninsulas and marked bayous of inlet and 
outlet; Geneva's glorious deep ultramarine becomes sud- 
denly transparent to its depths, where pebbled shallows 
and rock-strewn bottoms gleam like topaz. Seen thus 
on a quiet day one thinks that nothing could be more 
entrancing to the eye than its motionless turquoise sur- 
face, shot through everywhere with radiant sunlight to 
the very bottom. But seen on a windy day it is even 
a deeper blue, dotted everywhere with gleaming "white- 
caps" and its every leeward shore outlined with white 
where the surf breaks upon the beaches. And then one 
looks beyond the lakes, and lo! everywhere the deep 
amber or glowing gold of the grain fields, the curious 
patterned deep green of the standing corn over vast areas, 
the unexpectedly numerous dark-green stretches of wood- 
lands and forests. Through it all there run straight and 
arrowy the fine white lines of the roads, converging, one 
sees, where clustered roofs amid the trees show the hamlets 
and villages. Tiny farms are made out, wee red barns and 
little white silos beside them, and along the white highways 
that make it such a living map, the eye makes out the 
speeding specks of the automobiles on business or pleasure 

[213] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

bent. It may be but a few minutes that one spends in 
the ascending or descending spirals or the level flight 
of such a trip, but that vast and glorious marvel-view 
once seen remains one of the treasures of the memory- 
forever. 

The writer has often wondered that there are no records 
of any hermit having chosen to come and live alone, in 
tiny cabin or little house, about Geneva's shores; no 
more fortunate Thoreau, finding Walden's charms sur- 
passed on Geneva's larger amphitheater, pausing in his 
hoeing a Walworth County bean patch to jot down the 
doings of the loons on Geneva Bay in the spring or of 
the woodchucks of Fontana's gravel hills and clover 
acres. We have known other hermits galore, simple- 
minded nature lovers, some wise and others not so wise. 
Many of them have been as inarticulate of the wilderness 
they have loved as Gray's "mute, inglorious Miltons," 
but loving it none the less for their inability to express 
what it has meant to them. Others have even set their 
surroundings to music, like that strange, self-exiled 
ex-organist of one of London's cathedrals, who "toted" 
a whole pipe organ in pieces and in a dozen arduous trips 
from Telegraph Creek to his 30-miles-distant cabin 
in a Canadian wild, and set it up where no ears but his 
own, or those of the moose and bears who inhabited the 
forest about his "shack," could hear him pouring out his 
soul in expression of what that deliberately sought soli- 
tude came to mean to him. 

Surely Geneva is not too crowded, even at the 
"season's" height, for some latest philosopher-poet- 
naturalist to find places and hours where he might still 

[214] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

watch, with raptured eyes, the coming day or the passing 
storm or the painted sunset, and tell the rest of the world 
of the deeper meaning of these. The very swimmers 
who make the beaches ring with shouting and laughter 
as they flash, white-limbed, in and out of the water on 
an August afternoon, would have their own place in any 
modern estimate of the Lake's contributions to the gaiety 
of one nation, at least. The great Observatory itself, as 
upon its "heaven-seeking hill" it slowly, solemnly, 
almost silently revolves its great dome toward the sun 
and points toward that life-giving mystery the single 
eye of its mighty telescope, introduces into the whole 
what another Hawthorne might make the keynote of an 
added awe found in man's choice of the height of natural 
beauty from which to reach upward to the secret ways 
of the Architect of All. 

The majestic homes amid their "pleachM gardens" 
have their charm, too, of civilization's finest taste com- 
bined with Nature's most lavish bestowals. So have 
the innumerable motors, of even the well-to-do, who lean 
out behind their dusty chaufi^eurs to exclaim at this swift- 
passing scene or that; or the humbler little cars whose 
drivers and passengers prefer slower travel, and stop on 
every hilltop or beside every wave-sparkling beach, to 
feast eyes and mind on beauty and peacefulness. But if 
I were to seek for those who most appreciate the message 
of Lake Geneva, I would walk the old, deep-worn, one-time 
Indian trail, now the "lake path," till I came to one or 
another of the dainty, simple lakeside cottages where 
dwell the men and women, with perhaps a touch of the 
years upon them, who, as they will tell you, "have known 

[215] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 

the Lake for many a year, and don't seem to find any 
other place that so-kind of satisfies one the year 'round — 
that's all!" 

One there was, once, who, with all the Holy Land 
about Him from which to choose, above all the rest — even 
above the Holy City and its gold and ivory Temple — loved 
one blue lake, its waters, its beaches, and its hills. The 
fact is so evident from its repeated mentions in the 
accounts of His life that it can be analyzed, and the 
analysis is full of significance. He must have loved it 
for what it brought into His life, of beauty and peace 
and vision and inspiration and sense of the Presence of 
the Beyond. His hands must often have drawn His 
food from its waters. Its boats continually bore Him 
here and there upon its waters and to and from its landing- 
places. Whenever He was free to be there, His was one 
of the familiar faces upon its shores. He loved the simple, 
around-the-camp-fire meals upon its shores, for on one 
marvel-dawn He invited His hard-working, tired, and 
hungry fishermen friends to the picnic breakfast whose 
firewood His scarred hands had gathered and whose 
broiling fish They had caught. Of all earth's wondrous 
banquets none could begin to compare with that hour 
of a sunrise breakfast beside a lake shore with One already 
in the Great Beyond! 

He loved the kind of people whom He met beside that 
Lake, for from among them He chose His life's inti- 
mates. Its natural beauty must have appealed beyond 
words to Him, who always spoke of beautiful things as evi- 
dence in themselves of the love and care of Him whose 
every work is symmetry and beauty, from the lacy hexa- 

[2l6] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 

gon of the brief snowflake to the millions of suns of His en- 
during Universe. He loved the heights of the hills about its 
shores, for ever and again He climbed them for the joys 
of meditation and prayer beneath their silent but revealing 
stars. He loved the memories of all these, and the con- 
tinual refreshment of looking again upon their scenes, 
for from His first public appearance to His last Victorious 
Presence, He was continually returning for one more 
sojourn where every lovely prospect rejoiced the eye and 
every deep influence thrilled the heart. Above its every 
other contribution to His life, He must have been charmed 
by its continual revelation of Him who is above all things 
and in all. And now that He and His Spirit are mankind's 
universal and priceless possession, may there not be 
something of Him and His joyousness, His conscious- 
ness, and His perceptions, to be had by whosoever will, 
wherever some beloved lake is eloquent of past, of 
present, and of future, and through these all, of God ? 



[217] 



INDEX 



Agassiz, Louis, 98 

Agricultural Society, Annual Exhibition, 

167-68 
Allerton, Mrs. S. W., estate, 182 
"Alta Vista," O. W. Potter estate, 181 
Animals: and birds, 101-20 

Badger, 102 

Beaver, 102 

Bear, black, 102, 103 

Buffalo, 4, 86, loi, 102 

Cattle, 168 

Chipmunk, 105 

Coyote, 102 

Deer, 86, 102, 103, 104; white-tail, 102 

Elephant, 5 

Elk, 4, 102 

Ermine, 102 

Fox, 102 

Gopher, 105 

Horse, 4, 20, 168 

Lynx, 102 

Mammoth, 4 

Marten, 102 

Mastodon, 4, 5, 86 

Mink, 102, 105, 106 

Muskox, 78 

Muskrat, 102, 105, 106 

Otter, 102 

Porcupine, 102 

Pre-historic, 5 

Rabbit: cotton-tail, 102, 105; "snow- 
shoe," 102 

Raccoon, 102, 105, 106 

Reindeer, 78 

Skunk, 102, 105 

Squirrel: gray, 102, 105, 108; fox, 102, 
105, 108 

Weasel, 102, 105, 106 

Wildcat, 86, 102 

Wolf: prairie, 102; timber, 102 

Wolverine, 102 

Woodchuck, 102, 105, 106, 107; climbs 
trees, 108 
Antioch, 111., 86 
A. R. L, 156 
Arrowheads, Indian: distribution, 38-43; 

manufacture, 40-42; materials, 40-42; 

use, 43 
"Assensipia," 148 



Atkinson, General Henry, 28, 146 
"Atlanta, The," 72 
Ayer, E. E., estate, 183 

Bad Axe River, 28 

Baird, Mrs. Elizabeth Therese, 62 n. 

Barbour, M. T., 30 

Barnard, Edwin E., 124, 126, 128 

Barrett, Storrs B., 46 

Bartholomay, Mrs. Henry, estate, 182 

Bartlett, A. C., residence, 183 

Bartlett, Frederick G., 184 

Bear's claws, 103 

Beloit, 62; Indian mounds, loi; stage 

route to, 67 
Belvidere, 111., 65 

Bloomfield Township, 79, 149, 164 
Big Foot Lake, 1 5, 57, 62, 65 
Big Foot, 14, 23, 28, 37, 58; villages of, 

29-33, 62, 63; see Maunk-suck 
Bird Act, Federal Migratory, 109, 119 
Birds: game, 1 18; no mocking birds, 109; 

song, 109, 114, 119; song period of, 115; 

water fowl, 109, 117; varieties of, iio- 

12 
Birds: 

Bittern: American, 11 1; least, iii 

Blackbird: redwinged, ni; yellow- 
headed, III 

Bluebird, in, 114 

Bluejay, iii 

Bobolink, in, 117 

Cardinal, Kentucky, 109, no, 186 

Catbird, in, 114 

Chewink, in 

Chickadee, in, 114 

Chimney swift, in 

Coot, no 

Cowbird, in 

Cormorant, in, 113 

Crane, sand-hill, 118 

Creeper, brown, in 

Crow, III 

Cuckoo, yellow-billed, 112 

Dickcissel, 112 

Dove, mourning, in 

Duck, 109; bluebill, no; canvas- 
back, no; mallard, no; pintail, no; 
redheaded, no 



[219] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 



Finch, purple, iii 

Flycatcher: great-creasted, iii; Traill's, 
III 

Goldfinch, American, 1 1 1 

Goose: Canada, 109, no, 113; white, 
no 

Graclde, purple, iii, 117 

Grebe, pied, no 

Grosbeak: cardinal, 1 12; rose-breasted, 
112 

Gull: Franklin's, no; large white, no 

Hawk: Cooper's, in; red-tailed, in; 
sparrow, in 

Heron : blue, in; little green, in 

Humming bird, 112 

Indigo bunting, in 

Jacksnipe, in 

Junco, III 

Kingbird, in 

Kingfisher, in 

Kinglet: golden-crowned, in; ruby- 
crowned, in 

Lark: horned, 112, 114, 117; meadow, 
112; Western meadow, 112 

Loggerhead shrike, in 

Loon, 1 1 1 

Martin, in 

Maryland yellowthroat, in 

Merganser, American, no 

Nighthawk, 112 

Nuthatch, white-bellied, in, 114 

Oriole, Baltimore, in, 116; orchard, 
in 

Ovenbird, 112 

Partridge, 119 

Passenger pigeons, 118 

Pewee, wood, in 

Phoebe, in 

Plover, killdeer, in 

Quail, 112 

Rail: Carolina, in; Virginia, no; 
yellow, in 

Redstart, in 

Robin, in, 114, 117 

Sandpiper: least, in; pectoral, in; 
spotted, in 

Scarlet tanager, in 

Screech owl, in 

Sparrow: English, 112; field, 112; fox, 
112; grasshopper, 112; song, 112; 
swamp, 112; vesper, 112; white- 
crowned, 112; white-throated, 112 

Swallow: bank, ill; barn, in; eaves, 
ni 



Swan, 109, no 

Teal, blue-winged, no 

Tern: black, no; common, no; least, 

no 
Thrasher, brown, 114 
Thrush: brown, in; hermit, in; 

olive-backed, in; wood, in 
Turkey, wild, 119 
Vireo: blue-headed, n I; red-eyed, in; 

yellow-throated, in 
Warbler: Blackburnian, in; black- 
throated, in; green, in; black, in; 
white, in; myrtle, in; yellow, in 
Waxwing: Bohemian, 112; cedar, 112 
Whippoorwill, 112 

Woodpecker, 114, 116; downy, in; 
golden-winged, in; hairy, in; red- 
beaded, in; yellow-bellied, in 
Wren: house, in; long-billed marsh, 
in 
Black Hawk, 25-26, 28-29 
Black Hawk War, 25-29, 62, 65, 145, 147, 

148 
Black Point, Seipp estate, 182 
"Black Tofft," John T. Lester estate, 181 
Blakslee, George C, xi, 128 
"Bonnie Brae," T. F. Withrow estate, 181 
" Book of the Law of the Lord," 1 53, 155, 

156, 158 
"Book of Mormon," 158 
Borden, John, estate, 143, 181 
Brewster, F. E., 72 

Brink, John, 19, 30, 50, 63, 65, 66, 177 
Bruce, Miss Catherine W., 124 
Bryce, Lord James, 175 
Buena Vista Park, 62, 68 
Burroughs, John, y), i\l 
Butte des Morts, 25, 109 
Buttons Bay, 96, 186 

Cabins, pioneer, 179 

Cahokia, Treaty of, 14 

Caldwell, Billy ("The Sauganash"), 23- 

25,58 
Calvert, Mary R., 128 
Camp Collie, 190, 191 
Canoes, Indian: birch-bark, 80; hollowed 

logs, 20, 21, 80; paddles, 85 
Carruth, William H., 212 
Cass, Governor, 22, 25 
Cattle, 168; Guernsey, 168; Hereford, 

168, 185; Holstein, 165, 168, 169, 174; 

statistics, 165; Swiss Brown, 168, 186; 

Walworth County, 168 



[220] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 



Cedar Point, 73 

"Ceylon Court," 184 

"Ceylon Point," J. J. Mitchell estate, 

184 
Chambley (also Shabbona), 24-28, 58 
Chambley, Captain Jacques de, 24 
Chapin, S. B., 186 
Chautauqua Circuit, 161 
Chicago, see Dearborn, Fort; fish market, 

93.97 

Chicago Club, 191 

Chicago and Northwestern Railway, 72 

Children, 197 

Chippewa River, 22 

Choteau, P., 42 

Churches: Baptist, 73; Catholic, 73; 
Congregational, 72; country, study of, 
C. J. Galpin, 163; early Lake Geneva, 
72-73; Olivet Presbyterian, 189; Pres- 
byterian, 72 

Clark, George Rogers, 14 

"Clear Water" (Kishwauketoe"), 14 

Club: Belvidere, 191; Chicago, 191 ; 
Congress, 191; Country, Lake Geneva, 
188; Eleanor, 191 ; Elgin, 191 ; Har- 
vard, 191 ; Marengo, 191 

Collie, Camp, 190 

Collie, Rev. Joseph, D.D., 190 

Como, Lake, i, 3, 65, 66, 109 

Conference Point, 96, 116, 119, 190 

Congress Club, 191 

Cornishmen, 160 

"Council pole," Big Foot's, 30, 79 

Countiss, F. D., estate, 183 

County Fair, 167-68 

Country Church an Economic and Social 
Force, 163 

Country Club, Lake Geneva, 188 

Crane, R. T., estate, 181 

Crystal Lake, 56, 64 

Daily Northern Islander, 155 

Darien, 62; Township, 149 

Davidson, Colonel Royal P., 193 

Davis, Jefferson, 29 

Dearborn, Fort, 52, 53, 62 n., 65, 103 

Delap's Corners, 159 

Delavan Inlet, no 

Delavan: Lake, 1,2, 10, 62, 106; village, 

104, 168; Township, 149 
"Delavan lobe," 3 
Diamonds, 10 
Dixon, 111., 55 
Door County, 78 



De Tocqueville, 175 

Drainage areas, Chippewa, Flambeau, 

Manitowish, 142 
Dunkley's Grove, 56 
Dwinnell, Rev. A. S., 30 

Eagle, 10, 138 

East Troy, 106, 136, 167, 149 

"Effigy mounds," 15, 16, loi 

Eleanor Club, 191 

Elgin Club, 191 

Elgin, 111., 71 

Elkhorn, 118; band, 168; county seat, 
6, 67, 102, 137, 138, 167, 168; library, 
164; musical center, 168; population, 
164; scene of county fair, 168 

Ellerman, Professor Ferdinand, 1 26 

Fairbank, N. K., estate, 181 

"Fairoaks," E. E. Ayer estate, 183 

Federal Migratory Bird Act, 109, 119 

Fenneman, N. M., 8 

Ferguson, Mr., tavern of, 67 

Field Museum of Natural History, loi 

Fish: bait for, 100; depth for, 95, 97; 

Distribution and Food, 94; food, 97; 

free from parasites, 99; "gamy," 96; 

imported, 93; laws, 93, 97; of Lake 

Geneva, 93-100; not common in Lake 

Geneva, 95, 97, 100; "planting," 182 
Fish: 

Bass: large-mouth black, 95; rock, 94; 
small-mouth black, 94, 100; silver, 94 

Bluegill, 95 

Cisco, 94, 97, 98 

Herring, lake, 98 

Perch, yellow, 94, 95, 96 

Pickerel, 95, 99 

Pike, wall-eyed, 94, 99, 100 

Pumpkinseed, 95 

Salmon, California, 94 

Shadwater, 98 

Sucker, common, 94 

Trout: brook, 94, 95, 98, 198; lake, 93; 
salmon, 94 

Whitefish, 93, 98 

Whiting, 98 
Fontana, 6, 62, 67, 149; township name, 

150 
Foote, Henry M., 129 
Forests, 104 
Fort Howard, 56, 62 n. 
"Fossil ivory," 5 
Fox River, 50, 136 



[221] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



Frontier in American History, The, F. J. 

Turner, 175 
Frost, Edwin B., xi, 108, 128 
Fur trade, 68, 102, 104 

Galpin, C. J., 162, 163 

Gardens: private, 180; Allerton, 182; 

Hutchinson, 185-86; Wrigley, 185 
Geneva Bay, 93, 96 
Geneva, 111., 139 
Geneva, N.Y., 63 
Geneva, Switzerland, 73 
Geneva Township, 149 
Geology, 75 

German settlers, 147, 160 
Glenwood Springs, 61, 191 
Goats, Toggenburg, 168 
"Golden plates," 153 
Grant, General Ulysses S., 73 
Grass Lake, 86 
Great Beaver Island colony, Mormon, 

158 
Green Bay, i, 11, 13, 50, 139 
"Green Gables," William Wrigley estate, 

184 
Green Lake, 8, 97 
Greenville, Treaty of, 14 
Gringnon, Petaille, 55, 60 
Grinnell, George B., 42 
Gros-pied, Lac, 1 5, 57 

Hale, George E., 122, 125, 126, 128 

Hale, William E., 124, 125 

Hall, Rev. Lemuel, 72 

Harris, A. W., estate, 185 

Harris, N. W., residence, 185 

Harvard Club, 191 

Healy, Mark, estate, 44 

Helm, Edwin, 55 

Helm, Mrs. L. T., 55 

Henry, General James D., 28 

Hereford cattle, 168, 185 

Heron, 100 

Highways, three most beautiful, 135; see 

Motor routes 
Hobbs, William H., 10 
Hogs, 168 

Holiday Home, 188-89 
Hollister, C. B.,31 
HoUister, E. H., 32 
Hollister, Mrs. E. H., :^2 
Holstein cattle, 165, 168, 169, 174 
Hunting: Indian, 39, 43; modern, 209 
Hutchinson, Charles L., 185 



Hutchinson, Mrs. Charles L., 185 
Hutchinson estate, 43, 185, 186 

Ice sheet, i, 3, 4, 75; recession of, 4, 

76 
Ickes, Mrs. Harold, estate, 183 
Immigrants: Bohemians, 160; Cornish, 

160; German, 147, 160; Icelanders, 

160; Norwegian, 160, 177; Poles, 160; 

Scandinavian, 177; Swiss, 147 
Indian: burial customs, 31-33; councils, 

14, 26, 33-36; departure of, 36-37; 

food, 17-18; implements, 19-21,38-45; 

lodges, 63; mounds, 15-17, loi, 103; 

relics, 5, 30, 32, 38, 103; villages on 

Lake, 14, 30, 34, 58 
Indian tribes: Algonquins, ii; Chippe- 

was, II, 18; Foxes, 12; Menomonee, 

12; "Mound Builders," 15-16; Ot- 

tawas, II; Pottawatomies, 11-48; 

Pottawatomies, Wabash, 23; Sauks, 12; 

Sioux, 12; Winnebagoes, 12 
Indiana, lakes of, 97 
Inland Lake Yachting Association, 187 
Isham, Dr. George S., 180 
Isham, Dr. R. N., 180 

Jackson Creek, 106 

"Jerseyhurst," R. T. Crane estate, 181 
Johnson, Michael, 4 
Johnston, John T., Jr., 122 
Joliet, expedition, 51 

Juneau, Solomon, 19, 50; trading post 
of, 49 

Kaye's Park, 73, 192 

Kenosha: city of, 135; County, 2; first 

stage route, 67; opening of lands, 69 
Kentucky cardinal, 109, no 
"King's Day," 155 
Kinzie, John, 52; called Shawneeawkee, 

Kinzie, John H., 52, 59; sub-Indian 

agent, 53 
Kinzie, Mrs. John H., 52, 54, 62, 103 
Kinzie family, 20, 23 
Kinzie party, 55, 62; "Harry" (negro 

boy), 55; visit of, 50; route of, 63 
"Kishwauketoe" ("Clear Water"), 14 
Koshkonong, Lake, 62, 146 

"Lady of the Lake, The," 72 
Lafayette Township, 149, 164 
LaGrange Township, 149, 164 



[222] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 



Lake Geneva: Annals of, 6211., 71; 
animals and birds, 101-20; area, 8; 
Big Foot Lake, 57; "bird paradise," 
108, 120; clearness of water, 8; depth 
for fish, 95, 97; diamonds found at, 10; 
in 1831, 63; fauna, 108; fish, 93-100; 
first steamboat, 72; glacial origin, i, 2, 
75; great storm, 73; "hunter's para- 
dise," loi; Kinzie party at, 55; Kish- 
wauketoe, 9; level, 8; location, 3; 
money, 68; motor routes, 135-44; 
named, 64; outlet, 6; temperature, 
stratified, 9; topography, 1,3, 75; true 
brook trout, 94; vegetation, 76, 77; 
water supply, 6, 7; wild life today, 105 

Lake Geneva, city of, 67; epidemic, 73; 
first church, 72; first permanent settle- 
ment, 67; first railroad, 71; first 
school, 67; first stage route, 67; first 
store, 67; first train, 72; first visit of 
whites, 51, 61, 62 n.; land claims, 69; 
New England settlers, 69; population, 
73; visitors, 73; "Whiting House," 73 

Lakes: Butte des Morts, 25, 109; Como, 
I, 3, 65, 66, 109; Crystal, 56, 64; 
Delavan, i, 2, 10, 62, 106; Geneva, see 
Lake Geneva; Green, 8, 97; Kosh- 
konong, 62, 146; Mendota, 8; Mich- 
igan, 93, 95; Minnetonka, 187; Muk- 
wonago, 103, 136; Muskego, 136; 
Oconomowoc, 187; Pepin, 95; Pe- 
waukee, 102, 187; Poygan, 109; Wind, 
136; Wingra, 95; Winnebago, i, 50 

Land: early claims, 69; first govern- 
mental sale, 69; see John Brink and 
Christopher Payne 

Landor, Walter Savage, 21 

La Salle, at Chicago, 51 

"Late Wisconsin," 2 

Latter Day Saints, Reorganized Church 
of, 159 

Lauderdale Lakes, 138 

Lecuyer, Simon, 55 

Lee, Florence B., 128 

Lee, Oliver J., 128 

Leiter: estate, 182; fish-hatchery, 182 

Le Mai, 53 

Lester, John T., estate, 181 

Lincoln, Abraham, 29 

Linden, tree, 21, 84 

Lindquist, Lambert, 38 

Linn Township, 149, 164 

Little Prairie, 138 

"Loon Tavern," 67 



Loria, Italian economist, quoted, 175 
"Lucius Newberry," 72 
Lyons, i; Township, I49, 164 

McHenry, 135; County, 57 

McKillip, Mrs. Eleanor, 52 

Mackinac, 51 

Manitowoc County, 2 

Maple sugar, 83 

Marengo Club, 191 

Marquette, Father, loi; expedition of, 51 

Maumee River, 24, 52 

Maunk-suck (Big Foot), 37, 57, 58 

Maxwell, James A., 150 

Mendota Lake, 8 

"Merry Mount," 47 

Michigan: Lake, 93, 95; Territory of, 148 

"Michigania," 148 

Milk statistics, Walworth County, 165 

Milwaukee: city of, 64, 135; County, 2; 
opening of lands, 69; Public Museum, 
I02; River, 69 

Missionaries, early, 12, 51, 72; to Big 
Foot village, 29; Strang, 155 

Mitchell, J. J., estate, 184 

More, Mathias, 150 

"Mormon, Book of," 158 

Mormons: Delap's Corners church, 159; 
migration to Salt Lake City, 154; at 
Nauvoo, 151, 152; Salt Lake branch, 
159; Joseph Smith, Jr., branch, 159; 
Strang branch, 150-58 

Morris, 111., 27 

Morris, Seymour, 182 

Motor cars, numbers of, 193 

Motor camping, 193-94, 197 

Motor routes, 135-44; from Atlantic and 
Pacific, 142; Blue Mound Road, 137; 
cross-country, 141; Dixie Highway, 
139; easiest route, 141; Lincoln High- 
way, 139, 143; longest fine drive, 139; 
Loomis Road, 136; Snake Road, 143, 
I44; Wisconsin State Highway No. 11, 
141, 142; No. 12, 138, 141, 142; No. 16, 
142; No.i7,i2S\ A^o. .?o, 135, 142, 151; 
No. 25, 142; No. 34, 142; No. 36, 136; 
No. 37, 142; No. 45, 142; No. 50, 136, 
142; No. sg, 138; No. 6r, 136, 137 

Mound Builders, 15-16, 103; see "Effigy 
mounds" 

Mounds, Indian, 15-17, loi, 103 

Naperville, 111., 65 
Nauvoo, 111., 151 



[223] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



New England influence, 69-70, 160, 167 
Nicolet, Jean, 1 1 

Northwestern Military and Naval Acad- 
emy, 192-93 
Northwest Territory, I48 
Norwegians, 177, 160 

Oak openings, 81 

Observatory, Yerkes, see Yerkes Observa- 
tory 
Oetjen, Diedrich J., 129 
Olivet Camp, 189 
Olivet Presbyterian Church, 189 
Osage orange, 76 
Ottawa, 111., 27 
Ouilmette, Josette, 55 
Owen, Thomas J. V., 34 
"Owl Tavern," 67 

Payne, Christopher, 64, 65, 66 

Pearse, Professor A. S., 94, 97, 99 

Peps, son of Shabbona, 26, 27 

Pewaukee Lake, 102 

"Pickerelville," 93 

Pierce, Mary, 151 

Pioneer conditions, 175-79 

"Pleistocene," 4; animals, 5 

Poison ivy, 89-90 

Poland China hogs, 168 

Poles, 160 

Polygamy, Mormon, 156-57 

Pontiac, 14, 24 

Portage, 50, 103 

Porter, Governor George B., 34 

Porter, H. H., 180 

Pottawatomie: canoes, 20, 85; dress, 59; 
lodges, 19; name of Lake Geneva in, 
8, 14; three settlements, 14; terms of 
land cession, 35; transportation, 20; 
The Sauganash, 23, 29; Shabbona, 
23, 29 

Pottawatomies, 23, 55; Big Foot, chief 
of, 79; council of, 26; at Fort Dear- 
born, 22; with French, 14; headman 
of, 15; last to move, 36; at Lawrence, 
Kan., 36; moved to new reservation, 
27; peaceful, 21; peace chief of, 24; at 
treaty council, 47; from the Wabash, 23 

Potter, O. W., estate, 181 

Prairie du Chien, 22 

Precipitation, annual, 203 

Princeton, 111., 26 

Private gardens, 91 

Prospect Hill, 136 



Quaife, Milo M., 26, 34, 45, 46 

Racine: city of, 135; County, 2, 66; 

opening of lands, 69 
Rainfall, see Precipitation 
Richmond Township, 149 
Robinson (Indian), 58 
Rock County, 69 
Rockford Camp, 191 
Rock River Valley, 27 
Rollins, Philip Ashton, 71 
Ryerson, Martin A., estate, 181 

"St. James," 155 

Salt Lake City, 154 

"Sauganash, The" ("Billy Caldwell"), 

23-25, 58 
Sault Ste. Marie, 13 
Scandinavians, 177 
Schmidt, Dr. O. L., xi 
Schmidt, Mrs. O. L., 182 
Scott, General Winfield, 29 
Scott, Wis., 66 
Seipp, Conrad, 182 
Seneca, 111., 27 

Shabbona (also Chambley), 24-28, 58 
Sharon Township, 1 49 
Shaw, W. W., estate, 185 
Shaw-bee-nay, see Shabbona 
"Shawneeawkee," 53; see Kinzie 
"Shawnee Prophet," 45 
Sheboygan County, 2 
Sheridan, General Philip, 73 
Sheridan Cup, The: founded, 187; race, 

187, 199; trophy, 188 
Shrubs and plants: 

Anemone, 88 

Aster, 87 

Barberry, Japanese, 90 

Beans, 86 

Blackberry, 85 

Bloodroot, 89 

Buttercup, 89 

Cardinal flower, 87 

Cat-tail, 88 

Chrysanthemum, 90 

Columbine, 89 

Corn, 86 

Dogwood, 85 

Elderberry, 85, 90 

Fern: brake, 88; maidenhair, 88 

Gentian, fringed, 88 

Geranium, 90; wild, 89 

Goldenrod, 87, 89 



[224] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



Gooseberry, 85 

Grape, wild, 85 

Hepatica, 88 

Honeysuckle, 89 

Indian pipe, 88 

Ivy, poison, 8g; remedy for, 90 

Jack-in-the-pulpit, 88 

Lettuce, blue, 89 

Lilacs, 90 

Lobelia, blue, 89 

Lotus beds, 86 

Marsh marigold, 88 

Melons, 86 

Milkweed, 89 

Moccasin, yellow, 87, 88 

Phlox, blue, 89 

Raspberry, wild, 85 

Redbud, 85 

Rose, wild, 89 

Shadbush, 88 

Solomon's seal: giant, 85; star- 
flowered, 89 

Squash, 86 

Sumac, 87 

Tiger lily, 88 

Trillium, 88 

Tubers, 86 

Viburnum, sweet, 85 

Violet, 87 

Witchhazel, 85 

Woodbine, 89 
Silos: appearance, 213; contents, 166; 

materials, 166; number, 166 
Simmons, James, 62, 71 
Smith, Joseph, 151; death of, 152 
Smith, Sydney, 183 
"Snug Harbor," George Sturges' estate, 

181 
Social Anatomy 0/ a Rural Community, 

162-63 
Spring Prairie, 119, 137, 149, 151, 164 
Stamm, Stephen A., 129 
Stone Age, 13 

Stone work, Indian, 16-17, 38-44 
Strang, James Jesse: assassination, 157; 

burial places, 157, 158; converted to 

Mormonism, 151; crowned "King," 

155; death, 157; established colonies, 

Voree, 151-57; excommunicated, 152; 

feud with other communities, 156; 

Great Beaver Island, 155; investigated, 

156; law, 156; missionaries, 155; at 

Nauvoo, 152; origin, 151; "Prophet 
James," 153; "revelations," 153; 



sanctioned polygamy, 156; sumptuary 
laws, 156; tithes, 156; wives, 151 

Struve, Otto, 128 

Sturges, George, estate, 181 

Sturges, Shelton, 1 80 

"Sugar bushes," 83 

Sugar Creek Towiiship, 149, 164 

Sullivan, Frank R., 129 

Sullivan's expedition, I45 

Swiss, 147 

Swiss Brown cattle, 168, 186 

Taylor, Zachary, 29, 146 

Temperature, annual, 203 

Thames, Battle of the, 23, 24 

Thwaites, Reuben G., 150, 159 

Toggenburg goats, 168 

Township map, 1 49 

"Tree burial," 63 

Trees: ages of, 87; conifers, 76, 79; for 

fire wood, 82; nut-bearing, 77; useful, 

84 
Trees: 

Alder, 85 

Apple, 88 

Ash, white, 85 

Basswood, 84 

Birch, 85 

Bitter nut, 85 

Butternut, 84 

Cedar: red, 78; white, 76, 79 

Cherry, wild black, 85 

Chokecherry, 85 

ColTee, 85 

Cottonwood, 85 

Crabapple, wild, 85 

Dogwood, 85 

Elm: slippery, 85; winged, 85 

Fir, 78 

Ginkgo, 90 

Hickory, 84 

Ironwood, 85 

Larch, 76 

Linden, 84, 87 

Locust, 85 

Maple: hard, 82; red, 82, 87; silver 
(soft or river), 82, 87; sugar, 82, 83, 87 

Oak: bur, 80; chinquapin, 81; jack, 
81; mossy cup, 81; red, 8i; swamp 
white, 81; white, 80; yellow, 81 

Osage orange, 76 

Pawpaw, 76 

Pine, 78, 90 

Plum, wild, 85 



[225] 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENE V A 



Poplar, 85 

Scarlet haw, 85 

Spruce, 78, 90 

Tamarack, 78, 79 

Thornapple, 85 

Wahoo, 85 

Walnut, 84 

Willow, 84 
Trematode worm, 99, 100 
Troy Township, 149 
"Troy Valley," i 
Turner, Frederick J., 175, 176 
Turtle Creek, 60, 62 

Van Biesbroeck, George, 128 

Van Slyke, James, 37, 68 

Van Slyke, Mrs. James, 37, 68 

Vegetation era, 75 

Vegetation, see Shrubs and Plants, also 
Trees 

" Voree," colony, 151-57; building temple, 
152; cemetery, 152; established, 151; 
Herald,\Cj2)'i missionaries, 154; popula- 
tion, 154 

Voree Herald, newspaper, 1 53 

"Wadsworth Hall," W. W. Shaw estate, 
185 

Walworth, Reuben H., 148 

Walworth County, 2, 66, 103, 145; agri- 
culture, 166; Agricultural Society, 164- 
68; birds, 118; churches, 163; County 
Fair, 167-68; county seat, 102; history 
of, 145-74; location, 148; milk prod- 
ucts, 165; motor routes, 137; name, 
1 50; opening of lands, 69; population, 
164, 166; Strang episode, 150; towns 
and cities, 148; water power, 148; in 
the world-war, 166-67 

Walworth Township, 149, 164 

Warner and Swazey, 123 

Washington: County, 2; Island, 160 

Waterford, 136 

Water power, 63, 66, 148 

Watertown, Wis., 102 

Watson, Wingfield, xi, 158-59 

Wau Bun, 53 

Waukesha: city of, 137; County, 2, 102, 
137; pure-bred cattle, 137 

Weather, annual, 205 

Weatherford, William, 35 



" WesternSecretarial Institute," Y.M.C.A., 

189 
Whiskey, 20, 46, 47 
White pine country, I42 
White River, 6, d^ 
"Whiting House," 73 
Whitewater Township, 149, 164 
Williams, Captain Israel, 37, 67 
Williams, Royal, 67 
Williams Bay, 4, 137; birds, 110-12; 

first permanent settlement, 67; first 

railway, 72; fish, 99; mastodon, 5; 

peat bed, 6; population, 164; remains, 4 
Williston, S. W., 5 
Wilmarth, Mrs. H. M., 183 
Wilmot, Wis., 72 
Windmill, old Dutch, 180 
Winnebago Lake, i , 50 
Winnebago, Fort, 52, 53, 54, 62 n., 103 
Winnebago War, 22-25, 59 
Winnepesaukee Lake, N.H., 98 
Wisconsin: became state, 148; birds, 109; 

buffalo, loi; lakes of, 97; motor routes, 

135; roads, 144; Territory of, 148; 

trading posts, 102; triangle, 51; State 

Highway Commission, 138 
Wisconsin, University of, 94; Studies, 94 
Withrow, T. F., estate, 181 
Wolf River, 109 
Wood, Dr., 31 

Wrigley, William, Jr., estate, 184 
Wyants Museum, 192 
"Wychwood," Hutchinson estate, 185 

Yerkes, Charles T., 122, 124 

Yerkes Observatory, 121; architect, 122; 
cost, 125; founding, 122; grounds, 106, 
122, 125; location, 122; opening, 122; 
staff, 128. Telescopes: Bruce photo- 
graphic, 124; 12-inch, 124; 40-inch, 
123; reflecting, 124, 126. Use, 123, 127; 
visitors, 127, 201; visiting periods, 127; 
wide reputation, 125; woodchuck at, 
108 

Young, Brigham, 151, 152 

Young Men's Christian Association Col- 
lege, 189-90 

Young Women's Christian Association, 
189, 191 

"Zion, plant a stake of," 151, 153 



FKINTED IN THE TJ.S.A. 



K 18 8 



THE BOOK OF LAKE GENEVA 



Poplar, 85 
Scarlet haw, 85 

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"Western Secretarial Institute," Y.M.C.A., 



PRINTED IN THK U.S.A. 



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